2023-07-03 20:26:44
The Senegalese head of state announced on Monday July 3 that he will not run for a third term, following months of tension with the opposition around a possible candidacy.
End of suspense in Senegal: Macky Sall gives up running for the 2024 presidential election and running for a controversial third term as head of the country. The Head of State made the announcement during a speech this Monday evening, July 3, live on public television RTS. “My decision, long and carefully considered, is not to be a candidate. And this, even if the Constitution gives me the right”, he declared. While his main opponent, Ousmane Sonko, had called for demonstrations whatever happened in the streets of the country, this decision might calm the situation, while the climate was extremely tense in recent weeks.
For months, the Head of State had maintained vagueness regarding his candidacy, leaving the Senegalese to speculate while waiting for the presidential word. It is all the more paradoxical that he was elected in 2012 following having led a movement once morest the candidacy for a third term of his predecessor, Abdoulaye Wade, in power from 2000 to 2012. is filled with leaders capable of pushing the country towards emergence, he said Monday evening. I have a clear conscience and memory of what I have said, written and repeated, here and elsewhere, that is to say that the term of 2019 was my second and last term. »
Macky Sall had the Constitution revised in 2016, before being re-elected in 2019. It stipulates that “no one may exercise more than two consecutive terms”. His opponents therefore believe that he is regarding to finish his two legal terms. But his supporters, who have constantly presented him as their candidate in 2024, argued that the revision has reset the counters to zero. According to them, the legal debate was settled in his favour. This was without counting on political considerations.
Because the climate has been explosive in Senegal in recent weeks. On June 1, opponent Ousmane Sonko was sentenced to two years in prison in a vice case. His conviction rendered him in the present state ineligible. It caused in the wake of the most serious unrest in years in Senegal, killing 16 people according to the authorities, 24 according to Amnesty International and around thirty according to the opposition. The opponent, who enjoys great popularity with young people, has continued to cry out for the plot of power to exclude him from the presidential election of February 2024, which the power refutes. He has been blocked by the security forces at his home in Dakar, “sequestered” according to him, since May 28.
And that might well keep the country in a complex in-between. Especially since in a video published Sunday evening on social networks, the opponent called on the Senegalese to demonstrate “massively” the next few days, whatever the announcement of the president. “We have to come out and confront the regime of Macky Sall and say that it will not be up to him to choose the candidates who will have to compete for the next presidential election.” According to Ousmane Sonko, the president’s choice not to run is also aimed at better eliminating him. He warned that in case of arrest and if he is not released within two hours, “I call on all the Senegalese people to stand up as one man and to come out massively and this time to finish with this criminal regime”. “If we have to fight a fight, it must be final. I call for a national leap forward. The days and weeks ahead will be crucially difficult.”
1688420523
#Macky #Sall #finally #running #president #Liberation
