Senegalese President Macky Sall on Saturday announced the indefinite postponement of the presidential election scheduled for 25 February, just hours before official campaigning was due to start.
In an address to the nation, Sall said on Saturday that he signed a decree abolishing a previous measure that set the date as lawmakers investigate two Constitutional Council judges whose integrity in the election process has been questioned.
"I will begin an open national dialogue to bring together the conditions for a free, transparent and inclusive election," Sall added without giving a new date.
It is the first time a Senegalese presidential election has been postponed.
A November 2023 decree signed by Sall fixed the election for February 25, with 20 candidates in the running but without two major opposition figures.
Sall had repeatedly said he would hand over power in early April to the winner of the vote.
After announcing he would not run for a third term as president, Sall designated Prime Minister Amadou Ba from his party as his would-be successor.
The Constitutional Council has excluded dozens of candidates from the vote, including firebrand anti-system figurehead Ousmane Sonko and Karim Wade, son of former president Abdoulaye Wade.
Protests and police
Opposition supporters gathered in the capital Dakar on Sunday to protests to decision.
Senegal police fired teargas at hundreds of them, an AFP journalist saw.
Gendarmes fired tear gas to disperse men and women of all ages waving Senegalese flags or wearing the jersey of the national football team, who had converged in the early afternoon at a roundabout on one of the capital's main roads at the call of a number of opposition candidates.
Aminata Toure, former Prime Minister of Senegal, Member of Parliament & leading opposition figure, was arrested on 4 February 2024 in Dakar at the protest, according opposition deputy Guy Marius Sagna told AFP, as well as candidate Anta Babacar Ngom.
A presidential election unlike any other
No clear frontrunner had emerged ahead of the 25 February vote, with an unprecedented 20 candidates bidding to become Senegal's next president.
But the opposition from the ex-Pastef party had repeatedly shared opinion polls showing their large advance.
Ex-Pastef's vice-president, Birame Souleye Diop, told RFI that Faye was fully in tune with its voters' expectations. Diop claimed that pre-election polls gave the party some 71 percent of the vote.
Sonko's Pastef party has struck a chord with Senegal's youth with its pan-Africanist rhetoric and defiant stance on former colonial power France.
But after a series of judicial battles, its popular leader lost the right to compete and put forward substitute candidate Bassirou Diomaye Faye instead. Both are still in prison, and Faye might have to campaign from behind bars.
Concerns for freedom
Often held up as a bastion of stability in West Africa, Senegal's vote will be closed watched by the international community.
Since 2021, Senegal has witnessed deadly unrest caused by a severe clampdown on the opposition. The violence has led to dozens of deaths and hundreds of arrests.
Last month Human Rights Watch denounced Senegal's repression of opposition leaders, media and civil society, claiming that "the authorities have been filling prisons for the last three years with hundreds of political opponents".
>> Read: Human Rights Watch warns of Senegal repression ahead of elections
Sadibou Marong, head of office for sub-Saharan Africa at Reporters Without Borders, told RFI that the media watchdog had recorded 18 incidents against the press between mid-2022 and mid-2023.
"Most of them were related to elections," he added, saying that despite Senegal's historic press freedom, Sall has pushed for the persecution of journalists. "We are very, very worried," Marong said. Senegal's government, meanwhile, insists that "all freedoms are exercised without hindrance".
>> Listen here: Senegal: Elections & the press
Major infrastructure projects undertaken by Sall's government have divided the electorate. And the last few years of his presidency were difficult, marked by Covid, the war in Ukraine, and the departure of tens of thousands of Senegalese nationals to Europe.
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