Rhino – Agencies: Senegal’s presidential opposition candidates have rejected a call to join talks that President Macky Sall says are necessary before the date of the postponed presidential election is set.
Sall promised to step down when his term ends on April 2, but said he could not yet set a new election date despite pressure to end a three week of electoral crisis that has fueled unrest and fears of a decline in democracy.
He said political parties and civil society first needed to participate in the talks scheduled for Monday, a day after the presidential election was originally scheduled.
16 of the 19 presidential candidates rejected the proposal during a joint press conference in Dakar. “By his actions, he is destroying the constitution and adapting it to his needs,” a spokesman for opposition candidate Khalifa Sall said, calling on Sall to announce the election date as soon as possible.
Anta Babacar, the election rival, said in a statement: “I categorically reject this false dialogue, …, you cannot hold the future of the nation hostage.”
Civil society groups also refused to participate in the talks, and one of the electoral campaign groups (R Sono) said Sall had not fulfilled his promise to comply with the court’s ruling and called for the vote to take place before April 2.
Their decision is deepening the political crisis that has ravaged Senegal since early February when parliament agreed to postpone the presidential election by 10 months, a bill that the Supreme Court later ruled unconstitutional.
In a show of goodwill, Sall said he was ready to release popular opposition politician Osman Sonko from prison, and his arrest sparked protests across the country last year. Dozens of opponents of the president have already been released since the Senegalese Constitutional Council ruled that its decision to postpone the election was illegal, but the fact that the president did not set a new election date has heightened his critics’ suspicions that this is just another procrastination tactic.
President Sall served two terms as leader of Senegal, and when he was first elected in 2012, he promised he would not exceed his term in office. Sall originally said the postponement was necessary because of disagreements he warned would undermine the credibility of the election, but the move sparked widespread domestic and international backlash and was described by some as an attempted “institutional coup”.
