Parliament voted to push the polls again to December after President Macky Sall introduced a postponement final week.
Safety forces in Senegal have clashed with lots of of protesters who’re against the delay of the presidential election that was speculated to happen on February 25.
In Dakar, police fired tear fuel on crowds and prevented individuals from assembly and gathering to protest, in accordance with Al Jazeera’s Nicholas Haque, reporting from the capital on Friday.
“There have been operating battles between protesters and police and safety forces. A lot of the demonstrators are fairly younger, many 18-year-olds. They had been barely 12 when President Macky Sall got here to energy. They wish to have a say on this election,” Haque stated.
Lower than three weeks earlier than the polls had been meant to happen, parliament voted to push it back to December 15, upholding Sall’s earlier postponement announcement and sealing an extension of his mandate.
However the transfer has provoked fears that one of many remaining wholesome democracies in coup-hit West Africa is underneath menace.
Within the capital on Friday, some demonstrators waved Senegalese flags, whereas others shouted slogans like “Macky Sall is a dictator”, the Reuters information company reported.
At Blaise Diagne highschool in Dakar, lots of of pupils left their classes mid-morning after academics heeded the decision to protest. Historical past and geography instructor Assane Sene stated it was simply the beginning of the battle.
“If the federal government is cussed, we must strive completely different approaches,” he advised the AFP information company.
Sall, who has reached his constitutional restrict of two phrases, stated he delayed the elections on account of a dispute over the candidate list that threatened the credibility of the electoral course of.
The choice has unleashed widespread anger on social media and the opposition has condemned it as a “constitutional coup”.
Some critics additionally accuse Sall of attempting to cling to energy, whereas the West African bloc and overseas powers have criticised the transfer as a break with Senegal’s democratic custom.
‘Calm spirits’
“Senegal has maybe by no means skilled a disaster just like the one we’re experiencing and we should overcome it,” stated Senegal’s Justice Minister Aissata Tall Sall. “We should calm spirits.”
In an interview, Tall Sall stated the postponement was not the president’s choice, however the parliament’s, and “was completed in excellent conformity with the structure”.
After parliament voted, 39 lawmakers within the opposition coalition, Yewwi Askan Wi, and a number of other opposition presidential candidates filed authorized challenges towards the delay with the Constitutional Courtroom.
Tall Sall stated the challenges didn’t fall underneath the Constitutional Courtroom’s jurisdiction. However she stated the truth that opponents had been turning to the courts meant that “we’re in a functioning democracy.”
Nonetheless, she conceded the postponement had pitched Senegal into unprecedented uncertainty.
That is the primary time {that a} presidential election has been postponed since Senegal’s independence from France in 1960.
In an announcement on Friday, the European Union’s overseas coverage chief Joseph Borrell expressed concern in regards to the state of affairs in Senegal, urging the nation to “protect democracy”.
“Basic freedoms, and specifically these to exhibit peacefully and specific oneself publicly, are elementary ideas of the rule of regulation that the Senegalese authorities should assure,” Borell stated, and known as on authorities to organise elections “as rapidly as potential.”