Senegal’s President Macky Sall is ready to implement the conclusions that will emerge from the political dialogue, said a State House statement copied to APA on Friday, confirming also that the discussions will begin as agreed on May 28, 2019.
“The national dialogue initiated by the President of the Republic will be launched on Tuesday, May 28, 2019. This dialogue, which is a token of the President’s goodwill, is a democratic requirement that engages the various components of our society,” the statement stressed.
It added that the Head of State expressed “his readiness to implement the consensus resulting from this important exercise in the pursuit of the modernization of our democratic model.”
This agreement was one of the main conditions required by four unfortunate candidates in the last presidential election i.e. Madicke Niang, Idrissa Seck, Issa Sall and Ousmane Sonko for their participation in the political dialogue. Regarding the other condition related to an independent person to lead the political dialogue – and not the Minister of the Interior – the President of the Republic had already accepted.
Confirming Macky Sall’s agreement on the subject, the press release stresses that the latter nevertheless wants the choice of the future personality to lead the discussions to be “consensual.”
As a prelude to the national dialogue day, Interior Minister, Aly Ngouille had met opposition parties on May 9. The objectives of the national dialogue include “the evaluation of the presidential election, further consultations on the electoral register, the fine tuning of the modalities for the organization of local elections and the choice of the Leader of the opposition.”
For the moment, the Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS, opposition) of former President Abdoulaye Wade (2000-2012) has declined the invitation to attend the dialogue, including the conditions for any participation “the immediate release of Khalifa Sall and the revision of his son Karim’s trial, pursuant to international justice decisions condemning the State of Senegal, especially that of the United Nations Human Rights Committee.”
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