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.
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