On Tuesday, 5,000 supporters of Senegalese opposition leader Ousmane Sonko gathered in Dakar for a three-day rally in favor of the prospective presidential candidate, who faces a libel lawsuit this week. On Wednesday, protests are planned nationwide, but on Thursday, they will return to Dakar. The protests are the latest sign of Senegal’s rising tensions ahead of a 2024 election that might see President Macky Sall run for an unlawful third term.
Sall, 61, has not acknowledged or denied his candidature despite considerable speculation. He will face Sonko, who placed third in the 2019 presidential election and has subsequently acquired popularity, especially among disillusioned urban millennials. Sonko supporters waited in an empty field in Dakar’s Yoff neighborhood on Tuesday for the rally to begin. Several waved Sonko photographs and Senegalese flags. Anti-riot vehicles and scores of security personnel were there. Senegalese police suppress protesters quickly. Tear gas ended the last pro-Sonko protests last month. “We are weary of this repression, no one can demonstrate in Senegal. “Macky (Sall) cannot be a candidate,” protester Codou from Thies remarked. Sall’s opponents accuse him of trying to undercut the competition before the election with fake allegations and political cases. This is denied by the administration. On Thursday, Sonko, 48, is scheduled to begin his libel trial for accusing the tourist minister of theft. In 2021, he was charged with raping and threatening a beauty salon employee. Sonko denies wrongdoing. West Africa has traditionally looked to Senegal for democracy. Yet, Sall’s crackdown on dissent and inability to improve economic situations for most people have upset detractors.
In June 2022, Dakar residents chanted “Macky Sall is a dictator” to protest the president’s broad powers and the years-long pattern of political opposition being thwarted on technical grounds. The UN special rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Amnesty International criticized the protest crackdown, calling arbitrary arrests and “repeated bans on demonstrations, together with the deaths of people during such protests, represent a real threat to the right to protest in Senegal.” Once Sonko was arrested for sexual assault in 2021, nationwide clashes occurred.
