DAKAR, Senegal: Senegalese opposition leader Ousmane Sonko called for a peaceful protest on Saturday after authorities blocked a planned rally to publicly confirm his nomination as a candidate in the upcoming presidential elections scheduled to be held in February next year.
On Thursday, Sonko “was unanimously voted in as the PASTEF-Patriots’ candidate for the February 25, 2024 presidential elections,” According to a statement given by the party to AFP.
Sonko’s nomination comes despite lingering questions over his eligibility for the contest due to criminal convictions and prison sentences.
On Thursday, Dakar governor announced that the opposition party’s nomination rally, initially scheduled for Saturday afternoon in a stadium on the outskirts of the capital, had been banned due to the “risk of disturbing public order”.
Sonko told his supporters “another date” would be chosen for the rally, and called for a “concert of saucepans, horns and firecrackers” on Saturday evening from 8:30 to 9:00 pm (2030 to 2100 GMT) to peacefully express disapproval and call for President Macky Sall “to leave office in peace”.
“Macky Sall is trying to eradicate PASTEF and prevent me from being a presidential candidate,” Sonko said in an address on Friday evening in Wolof and French on his party’s channel.
The opposition leader who has been confined by the security forces at his home in Dakar since May 28, also asked his supporters to wear red in protest.
The firebrand opposition figurehead has generated a passionate following among Senegal’s disaffected youth, mounting a fiery campaign against Sall, who he paints as a corrupt, would-be dictator.
Sonko warned this month of “indescribable chaos” if he was prevented from running for the top office.
Sonko’s convictions in May and June this year sparked deadly clashes between his supporters and the security forces, leading to the worst unrest Senegal has seen in years.
On May 8, an appeals court gave Sonko a six-month suspended term for slander, although it is unclear whether this sentence, which can also be appealed to the Supreme Court, makes him ineligible.
On June 1, Sonko was also handed a two-year term following a trial on charges of sexual abuse of a beauty salon worker.
Eligibility question
Legal analysts and Sonko’s own lawyers say this conviction rules him out from being a candidate. But Sonko insisted Friday that despite the legal proceedings, he remains eligible for the 2024 poll.
PASTEF on Friday said Sonko “enjoys his political and civil rights in their entirety”.
“No-one can prevent Ousmane Sonko from being invested as (party) president or from taking part in the presidential elections,” it said.
Tensions that flared after Sonko’s conviction in June were also fueled by expectations that Sall would raise his hand for the elections in defiance of constitutional limits.
Sall is close to finishing his second presidential term, but his supporters argue that a 2016 revision of the charter reset the term clock.
But Sall wrong-footed both critics and supporters by announcing on July 3 that he would not be running again next year.
Meanwhile, Senegalese prosecutors Friday said they had filed an international arrest warrant against one of Sonko’s lawyers, French national Juan Branco, for “crimes and offences” that it said were connected with last month’s unrest.
On June 22, Branco said he had filed a criminal complaint against Sall in France for “crimes against humanity” and had requested a probe by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
His initiatives also named Interior Minister Antoine Felix Abdoulaye Diome and gendarmerie chief General Moussa Fall among more than 100 other accused.
The move sparked Senegal’s ire, with Foreign Minister Aissata Tall Sall lashing it as “childish and puerile” and falling far short of the benchmark needed for legal scrutiny. —AFP
