APA-Dakar (Senegal) Meeting in plenary session on Monday, the National Assembly adopted a bill derogating from the provisions of article 31 of the Senegalese constitution.
The presidential election was originally set for February 25, 2024. But 105 deputies from the ranks of the ruling Benno Bokk Yakaar (BBY) and the Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS) voted on February 5, 2024 to move the election to December 15, 2024.
The vote took place at around 11pm, after the intervention of gendarmes, in the absence of opposition MPs from the Yewwi Askan Wi coalition.
The adoption of this bill follows Macky Sall’s repeal of the decree clearing the way to hold the presidential vote.
One of the reasons advanced by President Sall was “a dispute between the National Assembly and the Constitutional Council, in open conflict over an alleged case of corruption among judges.”
At the request of his predecessor Abdoulaye Wade’s PDS, a parliamentary commission of inquiry was set up “to shed light on the process of verifying candidacies and any other facts relating to the election.”
Cheikh Tidiane Coulibaly and Cheikh Ndiaye, two of the seven judges on the constitutional council, are accused of taking bribes to invalidate the candidacy of Karim Wade, the son of the former President Wade, who is in exile in Qatar.
The constitutional council, for its part, in publishing a definitive list of 20 candidates, explained that it had excluded Karim from the electoral process because he is of dual Senegalese and French citizenship.
According to the country’s electoral law “any candidate for the Presidency of the Republic must be exclusively of Senegalese nationality.”
ID/fss/as/APA