Professor Ibrahim Gambari, Nigeria’s former Foreign Minister, and United Nations Under-Secretary, will lead a 100-member ECOWAS Election Observation Mission (EOM) to Senegal’s Presidential election rescheduled to the 24th of March 2024.
The Mission includes 14 Long-Term Observers (LTOs), who are experts in various fields, such as constitutional and electoral laws, election operations, conflict management and prevention, political analysis, gender and inclusivity, and the media.
They are being deployed this week and will be joined by 106 of their Short-Term colleagues from the 18th of March ahead of the crucial election featuring 19 presidential candidates including one woman.
The short-term observers are drawn from the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Electoral Commissions of the ECOWAS Member States, the ECOWAS Council of the Wise, the ECOWAS Parliament and Community Court of Justice, and Civil Society organizations in the region.
The EOM, which will support and monitor the electoral process to ensure best practices, will be supported by an ECOWAS Technical Team led by Ambassador Abdel-Fatau Musah, Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security, and Mr. Serigne Ka, Head of the ECOWAS Electoral Assistance Division (EAD).
The President of the ECOWAS Commission, Dr Omar Alieu Touray, approved the deployment of the EOM to Senegal in line with Articles 12 to 14 of the regional Supplementary Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance on support for member States holding elections.
Under the provisions of Article 13 of the Supplementary Protocol, the Commission President had also deployed a pre-election fact-finding mission to Senegal from 26 November to 3 December 2023. The mission met with political stakeholders, including government officials, political parties, the National Electoral Commission CENA, and non-state actors.
There are 7.4 million registered voters from the country’s estimated population of 18,032,473, (49.4% females and 50.6% Males), slightly higher than the 6.7 million in the 2019 presidential election, which recorded about 66% voter turn-out when the outgoing President Macky Sall won reelection with 58% of the votes. Sall is not on the ballot for the 2024 election originally scheduled for the 25th of February 2024.
Senegal was among the first countries in sub-Saharan Africa to hold multi-party presidential elections in 1978 before the wave of democratic transition in the 1990s. For this year’s election, some 338,040 Senegalese were registered in the diaspora.
The country has continued to hold presidential and legislative elections, sometimes marked by political tensions, but without significant threats to the stability of the country’s institutions.
But the run-up to the vote this year’s election has been characterized by uncertainties including postponements through a presidential decree, backed by a controversial law passed by the National Assembly and a National Dialogue convened by the president to agree on a new date for the vote, which was boycotted by most of the opposition candidates.
Amid political tensions and sporadic street protests, the Constitutional Council, which has the final say in electoral matters in Senegal intervened to nullify as unconstitutional, the presidential decree, the law by the National Assembly, and the outcome of the National Dialogue, all seeking to postpone the election.
The Council ruled that the election could not be held after the 2nd of April 2024, the end of President Sall’s constitutionally allowed second mandate, before the president finally issued a decree fixing the vote on the 24th of March 2024.
After months of political suspense, President Sall, eventually declared that he would not go for a controversial third-term mandate. But during violent clashes in April 2023 between security agents and supporters of opposition leader Ousmane Sanko, at least 16 people were killed followed by four recent deaths during street protests against the postponement of the presidential election.
Sonko has been convicted of “corrupting/radicalizing Senegalese youths,” but he has rallied his supporters to vote for another opposition figure Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who is in detention awaiting trial for “spreading false news and insulting a magistrate.”
Electioneering started on Sunday, the 9th of March. Voting officially opens from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., in 15,633 polling units of the 6,341 polling centers spread across the country’s 14 regions, including the capital Dakar.
The 19 presidential candidates cleared by the Constitutional Council include Amadou Ba, former Prime Minister, veteran opposition leader Idrissa Seck, and former Dakar Mayor Khalifa Sall.
The only female candidate is entrepreneur Anta Babacar Ngom. The second, a gynecologist Rose Wardini withdrew from the race before the 24 March 2024 date was announced following allegations that she also has dual citizenship. If none of the 19 candidates obtains an absolute majority of votes, there will be a run-off vote between the two frontrunners, 15 days after the official declaration of the final results of the first round.
