Senegal’s President Macky Sall took advantage of the last weekly Cabinet meeting on Wednesday to bid farewell to his ministers.
During the meeting he announced that he would appoint a Prime Minister and reshuffle the government as soon as he returns from Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital on February 9, where he will be inducted as Chair of the African Union on Saturday.
The Cabinet reshuffle that has been agitated since the announcement of the reintroduction of the post of Prime Minister, which was abandoned in 2019, is imminent. After the January 23, 2022 local elections, which saw the ruling coalition lose the symbolic cities of Dakar and Ziguinchor to the opposition, Macky Sall will have to reshuffle the cards in a move that could affect the various spheres of the state.
Are we heading for a government of national unity or a political government in view of the upcoming elections? Will Macky Sall separate himself from the leaders who lost their strongholds in the last local elections?
What lies ahead for National Assembly Speaker, Moustapha Niass, Aminata Mbengue Ndiaye, the President of the High Council of Territorial Communities and Idrissa Seck, the President of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council? These old-style allies of Macky Sall, at the head of the country’s three major institutions, have one thing in common: they saw their parties lose in the last local elections.
If Moustapha Niass has expressed his desire to step aside from his seat as Speaker after the upcoming legislative elections planned for July 31, 2022, it is legitimate to wonder about the fate of Idrissa Seck, second in the last presidential election of 2019 before joining Macky Sall in November 2020, and Aminata Mbengue Ndiaye, the leader of the Socialist Party (PS).
The new government team will have to find its feet quickly before the next legislative elections and the presidential elections in February 2024.
Elected in 2012 and re-elected in the first round in 2019, Macky Sall, now 60 years of age, is yet to officially declare his candidacy for a third term in 2024.
CD/fss/abj/APA