Senegal and the Democracy Project in Africa
As humans, we are wired to love stories of magical transformations. And the top spot in that genre at the moment must go to the story of the president-elect of Senegal, Bassirou Diomaye Faye. On 13th March 2024, Faye was still languishing in jail. Eleven days after, he was elected the president of his country. So, he literally walked from the prison to the presidency of his country. How more enchanting can it get!
To be sure, other African leaders had walked that unbeaten path, notably Nelson Mandela and Olusegun Obasanjo. But both had more lead time between coming out of prison and clinching the highest office in the land. Also, both had a storied antecedent and a name recognition that had travelled far beyond their countries. (Who in the world didn’t—or still doesn’t—know about Mandela spending 27 years in jail?) But most Senegalese—not to talk of non-Senegalese—had a scant idea of who the 44-year-old Faye was. Faye got on the ballot only because his mentor, co-detainee and the current leading opposition politician in Senegal, Ousmane Sonko, was banned from running for office.
After their release, Sonko did the campaign rounds with Faye, under the slogan: ‘Diomaye is Ousmane’. And according to a report in The New York Times, some voters actually said they were voting for Sonko in the presidential election. But for me, this is the real magic of Faye’s enchanting story: in 2022, Faye had run to be the mayor of Ndiaganiao, his remote and rustic village, and he lost; two years after, he ran for the highest office in his country, and won at the first ballot, even when most pundits had predicted the election would go into a runoff. Simply amazing!
There are a few things to unpack in this bright and exciting story, including how this fairytale victory came about and the potential problem with a proxy presidency. But for now, we need to celebrate what the outcome of the March 24th election in that West African country signifies for the democracy project not just in Senegal but in Africa, a continent where democracy has been in rapid retreat of late.
Senegal has for long been an oasis of stability and a relatively safe place for democracy in the subregion and on the continent. Remarkably, the country has never experienced a military coup since it gained independence from France in 1960. Even during a period when military rule and one-party dictatorship were the norm on the continent, Senegal managed to, positively, buck the trend.
Senegal’s first president, Leopold Sedar Senghor (the charismatic poet, nationalist and one of the leaders of the Negritude Movement) was in office for a little over 20 years. But he stayed in power through mandates renewed thrice at the polls, and at 74, he stepped down voluntarily mid-way into his last term in office. Senegal has also achieved renown as a country of peaceful transfer (alternation even) of power among parties since March 2000 when Abdoulaye Wade, the country’s long-standing opposition figure, eventually won the presidency. (Wade himself was defeated by Sall when the former tried to run for a third term in 2012.)
However, Senegal started emitting worrying signs about the durability of its hard-won status about three years ago. Macky Sall, who came into power as an opposition figure and started out as a reformer, led the backsliding. Sall got into office in 2012 via a runoff after coming second to Wade on the first ballot. Sall had won the runoff by a wide margin after rallying a coalition of opposition parties to his side. True to his promise, he spearheaded the amendment of the constitution to reduce the presidential tenure from seven years to five years. This took effect from his second term in 2019, which he won easily. However, there was an air of uncertainty over whether the 2016 amendment gave Sall the leeway to contest for a third term, the way an earlier amendment gave Wade the leeway to run for a third term. But there was clear opposition to this. In July 2023, Sall had to categorically state that he was not going to run. Some believe he did this grudgingly.
Before then, the country had been roiled by protests, led by youths and urban dwellers who feel left behind by recent economic growth in the country. The growing army of the disenchanted found a rallying point in Ousmane Sonko, a former tax inspector and whistleblower turned opposition politician, who secured about 16% of the votes cast in the 2019 presidential poll. Some Senegalese regard Sonko as a rabble rouser and a divisive figure, but most of his supporters see him as a champion of the masses. The Sall government prosecuted Sonko for a series of crimes, including rape, defamation and incitement. But that only made him more popular. Faye was arrested and jailed for a Facebook post defending Sonko and for allegedly defaming judges. The Sall government was also cracking down on protests, resulting in the imprisonment and deaths of protesters, and the hardening of opposition to the government.
Protests were not particularly new in Senegal. Protests were common anytime the country went through bouts of economic downturn. Repression of protesters and opposition figures was not new either. However, many had cause to worry for democracy in Senegal because of the overreach by Macky Sall, especially his decision to postpone the presidential election indefinitely over allegation of corruption in how the candidates emerged This fed into the narrative that Sall didn’t want to leave office in the first instance. His action, which drew national and global outrage, was described as a