Senegal to hold delayed presidential election on March 24

Senegal’s delayed presidential election will now take place on March 24, President Macky Sall has said.

The election was to have been held last month but was postponed by Sall who cited a potential chaos after some candidates were excluded from the race.

The country’s parliament subsequently decided to reschedule the election to December, extending President Sall’s mandate beyond April 2.

But Senegal’s top court ruled that, the proposal to hold the vote after Sall’s mandate expires on April 2 was unconstitutional.

The Constitutional Council also ruled that a proposal from a national dialogue commission for the vote to be held on June 2 was also not in line with the constitution.

Wednesday’s announcement for the election to take place this month came with changes to the government as well.

Sall dissolve the government and replaced Prime Minister Amadou Ba with Interior Minister Sidiki Kaba.

This was to enable Ba, the ruling coalition’s presidential candidate, focus on his electoral campaign, the presidency said.

“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 in a statement.

The new date has been welcomed by one of the opposition presidential candidate Anta Babacar.

“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 was quoted by Reuters as saying.

The earlier postponement of the election triggered protests and on Wednesday the parliament approved an amnesty law proposed by Sall to ease tensions.