A proposal to hold the vote after Senegalese President Macky Sall’s term ends on April 2 was declared unlawful by a top court, prompting the administration to announce on Wednesday that a postponed presidential election has been scheduled for March 24.
The announcement completes a tumultuous evening in which Sall dismissed Prime Minister Amadou Ba and installed Interior Minister Sidiki Kaba in his stead. This allowed Ba, the presidential candidate of the ruling coalition, to concentrate on his campaign, according to the presidency.
A proposal from a national dialogue panel for the vote to take place on June 2 was previously declared to be unconstitutional by the Constitutional Council.
“The President of the Republic informed the Council of Ministers that the date of the presidential election had been set for Sunday 24 March,” the council of ministers said soon after in a statement.
The decision is the most recent development in a month-long electoral crisis that has provoked violent rioting and international friends of Senegal warning that the country’s standing as one of the more stable democracies in coup-hit West Africa is in jeopardy.
Opposition presidential candidate Anta Babacar welcomed the revised date. Like most of the 19 candidates in the contest, Babacar wanted the voting to happen as soon as feasible.
“I think this is very good news. This is the reason why we were fighting for these past weeks and days, because we knew that it was actually possible to hold these elections before April 2,” she told Reuters.
The authorities’ unsuccessful attempt to move the poll scheduled for February 25 to December is what started the unrest in the first place. Sall justified the action by citing worries about electoral disputes, but some opposition members claimed it amounted to an attempted institutional coup.
