Clashes between security forces and protesters gripped Senegal’s capital and other cities in the first widespread unrest over the delay of a presidential election that many fear could lead to protracted instability.
In the capital, Dakar, police in riot gear fired teargas, stun grenades and what appeared to be rubber bullets at large crowds of protesters who were burning tyres and throwing stones, a reporter with the Reuters news agency said.
One student was killed in the northern city of Saint-Louis, opposition leader Khalifa Sall said in an online statement. Reuters could not immediately verify the report and a representative of the student’s university did not respond to a request for comment.
“The hearts of all democrats bleed at this outburst of clashes provoked by the unjustified halting of the electoral process,” said Sall, who has called recent events an “institutional coup”.
Less than three weeks before the 25 February vote, parliament voted to push it back to December, sealing an extension to President Macky Sall’s mandate that has raised concerns that one of the remaining democracies in coup-hit West Africa is under threat.
In Dakar, some of the demonstrators waved Senegalese flags, while others shouted slogans such as “Macky Sall is a dictator”.
Demonstrators also faced off against police elsewhere, including Touba city in central Senegal, Thies city east of Dakar, the northern city of Richard Toll and Kolda in the south, residents told Reuters or posts on social media showed.
Macky Sall, who has reached his constitutional limit of two terms, said he delayed the vote due to a dispute over the candidate list that threatened the credibility of the electoral process.
Some critics accuse him of trying to cling to power, while the West African bloc Ecowas and foreign powers have criticised the move as a break with Senegal’s democratic tradition.
“Senegal has perhaps never experienced a crisis like the one we are experiencing and we must overcome it,” the justice minister, Aissata Tall Sall, said. “We must calm spirits.”
In an interview on Friday, Tall Sall said the postponement was not the president’s decision but parliament’s. She also said legal challenges filed to the constitutional court did not fall in its jurisdiction.
“This postponement of the presidential election was done in perfect conformity with the constitution,” she said.
On Friday, the United States embassy in Dakar said the US supported an earlier call from Ecowas for authorities to restore the electoral calendar in line with the constitution.
“We have heard from a wide range of Senegalese political and civil society actors who share this view,” the embassy said in an online post.
The postponement bill was passed by 105 legislators in the 165-seat assembly on Monday after security forces broke up an attempt by a group of opposition members to block the vote and dispersed small-scale protests outside parliament with teargas.
Thirty-nine lawmakers in opposition coalition Yewwi Askan Wi and several opposition presidential candidates have since filed legal challenges with the constitutional court.
Tall Sall said the court could not handle these because they did not fall in its purview. She did not say which legal body would look at the challenges, but said the fact opponents were turning to the courts meant “we are in a functioning democracy”.
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Guardian
