“We have given a majority in the National Assembly to our President Macky Sall,” said the head of the presidential coalition list, Aminata Touré.
In Africa, Senegal is accustomed to out of the ordinary elections. After two surprising power shifts in 2000 and 2012, this African democratic model was preparing, according to some prognoses strongly supported in the opinion, to live its first cohabitation between an elected president and an opposition majority in parliament at the end of the legislative held Sunday, July 31.
But the scenario of a new Senegalese specificity seems to have little chance of happening, according to the camp of President Macky Sall.
According to the presidential coalition, it won the majority of the 165 seats of the future national assembly that must legislate for the next five years.
“We have won 30 departments” out of the 46 in Senegal and constituencies abroad. “This gives us an unquestionable majority in the National Assembly,” Ms Touré told reporters on Sunday evening.
“We have given a majority in the National Assembly to our coalition president, Macky Sall,” Touré added, without giving the number of MPs obtained by her camp or specifying whether it is a relative or absolute majority. She acknowledged the defeat of her coalition in Dakar.
This legislative election, which is played in a single round, must renew for the next five years 165 seats in the unicameral parliament largely controlled by the presidential camp.
President Sall promised to appoint a prime minister at the end of these elections. The post had been abolished and then reinstated in December 2021, but the president was waiting for the outcome of these legislative elections to appoint an incumbent.
About seven million Senegalese were called to the polls, which took place without major incidents.
The turnout was 22 percent nationwide on Sunday at 1pm, according to the Interior Ministry. The National Autonomous Electoral Commission (CENA), in charge of managing the vote, deployed some 22,000 observers. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the OIF (International Francophone Organisation) also deployed observers throughout the country to monitor the election.
LOS/lb/abj/APA