With Sall as president of the African Union, he’s taken up an even larger international profile, hosting talks on Ukraine with both Russia’s Vladimir Putin and the United States’s Joe Biden. More recently, Dakar has blossomed into a hub for United Nations regional offices.Įuropean nations, scrambling for alternatives to Russian energy, are eyeing Senegal’s newly discovered oil and gas deposits. Since independence, the country has enjoyed close relations with the United States and former coloniser France. Senegal’s good image has always been important in its international relations, even if, domestically, things have never quite matched up to what has been sold abroad. But we can’t say we have a democracy,” he said, citing a lack of transparency around legislation and the presidency’s many powers, problems which predate Sall. “We have an image of democracy on the exterior that’s not actually real,” said Samba Thiongane, a Dakar resident who was at the June protests and those against Wade’s third-term attempt in 2012. Afterwards, Senegal became more democratic under Abdou Diouf who, nevertheless, held onto the post until 2000.ĭiouf’s successor, Abdoulaye Wade ran for a controversial third term in 2012, leading to mass protests which helped carry Sall to the presidency.Īll this provides an uneasy background if Sall runs for a third term in 2024 if he does – as analysts have feared might happen – it would not represent a dark turn for a leading democratic light on the continent, but rather business as usual. Léopold Sédar Senghor, its first president, ruled with a tight grip from independence in 1960 to 1980, outlawing rival political parties. And a deeper look at history also shows that Senegal’s image as a pillar of stability and democracy was built on shaky ground. Senegal has often been lauded in international circles as a beacon of stability in the region – with a notable lack of military coups and a history of peaceful presidential transitions – but its reputation is at risk of slipping. It will be a vicious cycle.”ĭemocratic image abroad, harsh truths at home “Otherwise when the next president is elected in 2024, if we don’t put in place reforms, we will be on the same path. “It’s fundamental to think of reform,” he said, especially in the power of the presidency, and its sway over the judicial and lawmaking process. “But in practice, we could say that Senegalese democracy is running out of breath.”
“It’s a stable democracy, in the African context, in theory,” Maurice Toupane, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, a Pretoria-based think-tank, told Al Jazeera. The resulting crackdown on the June protests earned rebukes from the United Nations Special Rapporteur Freedom of Association as well as Amnesty International, which in a statement said that arbitrary arrests during the June protests, along with “repeated bans on demonstrations, together with the deaths of people during such protests, represent a real threat to the right to protest in Senegal.” The opposition will still be able to run alternate candidates, but main leaders like Ousmane Sonko – who came third in the 2019 presidential elections – won’t be on the ballot.īeyond the immediate concerns, however, lie longstanding political issues that have dogged Macky Sall’s presidency since he came to power in 2012.Ĭries of “Macky Sall is a dictator” rang out in Dakar as protesters called out the wide-ranging powers vested in the presidency, and the yearslong pattern of political opposition being stymied, always on seemingly technical grounds.
The most recent protests are decrying the move by Senegal’s constitutional council to throw out the candidate list for the main opposition coalition ahead of the legislative elections at the end of this month. As protests rocked the country, three people were killed, according to Amnesty International. Streets were barricaded and blocked off by authorities. In Dakar, students threw stones at police. In southern Senegal, authorities were accused of using live rounds to disperse protesters. Some opposition leaders were blocked from leaving their homes by police, while others were arrested for organizing what authorities deemed illegal protests. Dakar, Senegal – As the smoke from protesters’ fires billowed upward into the sky and tear gas from police crept through boulevards and alleyways last month, Senegal – often lauded as West Africa’s most stable democracy – once again found itself in turmoil.