The Senegalese Constitutional Council on Saturday published a final list of 20 candidates for the Feb. 25 presidential election that excludes jailed opposition leader Ousmane Sonko and Karim Wade, the son of former Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade.
Those listed include Senegalese Prime Minister Amadou Ba, chosen by President Macky Sall as his successor after Sall announced in July last year that he would not seek a third term.
Also named were former Senegalese prime ministers and rivals Idrissa Seck and Mahammed Boun Abdallah Dionne, former Dakar mayor Khalifa Sall and Bassirou Diomaye Diakhar Faye, who was presented as a substitute candidate for Sonko.
Photo: Reuters
Faye, 43, a member of Sonko’s dissolved Pastef Party, is also detained but has not yet been tried.
He has been in prison since April last year for “contempt of court” and “defamation against a corporate body” over a Facebook post.
Sonko, who came third in the 2019 presidential election, has been at the center of a bitter standoff with the Senegalese state that has lasted more than two years and sparked often deadly unrest.
The 49-year-old opposition figure has generated a passionate following among Senegal’s disaffected young people, striking a chord with his pan-Africanist rhetoric and tough stance on former colonial power France.
The Senegalese Constitutional Council rejected Sonko’s candidacy due to his six-month suspended sentence for defamation, which was upheld by the Senegalese Supreme Court on Jan. 4.
In other legal cases, Sonko was sentenced in June last year to two years’ imprisonment for morally corrupting a young person and has been jailed since the end of July on other charges, including calling for insurrection, conspiracy with terrorist groups and endangering state security.
He has denied the charges, saying they are intended to prevent him from running in next month’s election.
It is the first time Senegal has organized a presidential election with so many candidates, constitutional lawyer Babacar Gueye said.
There were five candidates during the previous contest in 2019.
Karim Wade, who served as a minister when his father was in power, was excluded as his candidacy was deemed “inadmissible” because of his dual French and Senegalese nationality, the Senegalese Constitutional Council said.
Presidential candidates “must be exclusively of Senegalese nationality” and aged 35 to 75 on election day, it said.
Wade, who was born in France to a Senegalese father and a mother of French origin, had presented documents showing he had renounced his French nationality.
However, the council rejected them, saying the decree confirming his loss of French nationality was “not retroactive” and his sworn declaration was “inexact” at the time of its filing.
DIALOGUE: US president-elect Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform confirmed that he had spoken with Xi, saying ‘the call was a very good one’ for the US and China US president-elect Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) discussed Taiwan, trade, fentanyl and TikTok in a phone call on Friday, just days before Trump heads back to the White House with vows to impose tariffs and other measures on the US’ biggest rival. Despite that, Xi congratulated Trump on his second term and pushed for improved ties, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The call came the same day that the US Supreme Court backed a law banning TikTok unless it is sold by its China-based parent company. “We both attach great importance to interaction, hope for
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
CYBERSCAM: Anne, an interior decorator with mental health problems, spent a year and a half believing she was communicating with Brad Pitt and lost US$855,259 A French woman who revealed on TV how she had lost her life savings to scammers posing as Brad Pitt has faced a wave of online harassment and mockery, leading the interview to be withdrawn on Tuesday. The woman, named as Anne, told the Seven to Eight program on the TF1 channel how she had believed she was in a romantic relationship with the Hollywood star, leading her to divorce her husband and transfer 830,000 euros (US$855,259). The scammers used fake social media and WhatsApp accounts, as well as artificial intelligence image-creating technology to send Anne selfies and other messages