-Analysis-
PARIS — The democratic window has been shattered. From afar at least, Senegal has long been a model in French speaking-Africa. It was the first country to try a multi-party system, the first to see a president, Léopold Sédar Senghor, voluntarily leave power and the first to experience democratic alternations in relatively good order …
But that’s all over since the current president, Macky Sall, has suspended the election of his successor scheduled for Feb. 25, an arbitrary decision that has enraged a part of the population, and plunged Senegal into the unknown.
Late Monday, the National Assembly painstakingly adopted a motion validating the president’s position a posteriori, after more than two days of the streets filled with demonstrators and the smell of tear gas, just like in 2021 and 2023, during bloody protests by young demonstrators. The suspension of mobile Internet access also contributed to the feeling of democracy brutally put on pause.
The only certainty is that the president’s term ends on April 2, and that he intends to remain in office until at least December 15, the deadline set out in the motion passed Monday night. By then, we’ll be outside the institutional framework, in the midst of uncertainty.
Official and non-official reasons
There are official reasons for the crisis: a conflict with the Senegalese Constitutional Council’s decision to invalidate one candidate, Karim Wade, the exiled son of former President Abdoulaye Wade, all while validating another; along with accusations of corruption by two judges.
But the real reason is the fear of a radical party winning, despite the imprisonment of its leader, Ousmane Sonkho. The presidential camp’s candidate, Prime Minister Ousmane Ba, is contested and, according to the polls, would lose in the second round.
The fear of losing the power of the political establishment led Macky Sall to commit the unthinkable and suspend an electoral process, despite having made the right choice last year by abandoning his ambition to run for a constitutionally forbidden third term.
West Africa is moving away from the imperfect democratic systems set up after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Sall’s opponents speak of an “constitutional coup d’état“, drawing a parallel with the repeated military coups in neighboring West African countries. These are, in fact, democracies without democrats.
Authoritarian backlash
For the most part, West Africa is moving away from the imperfect democratic systems set up after the fall of the Berlin Wall, three decades ago. These facade democracies have delivered neither transparency nor economic and social progress — and the price of their failure is an authoritarian backlash.
There will be no looking back.
The cautious reactions of France, the European Union and the United States to events in Senegal are strikingly weak. France, the former colonial power, which still has a military base in Dakar, fears above all being the scapegoat for the public anger against Macky Sall, who is considered close to French President Emmanuel Macron. During the 2021 riots, the targets were mainly French supermarkets and service stations.
Whatever happens in Senegal, there will be no looking back. The political model of recent decades has come to an end and it remains to be seen whether it will be able to reinvent itself in good order, or whether it will experience a descent into chaos and crisis, like too many of its neighbors. Bad news for Senegal is bad news for progress in Africa.
