Today, Senegal’s Constitutional Council turned down the candidacies of Karim Wade and Khalifa Sall for the 24 February presidential elections. The candidacies had been provisionally advanced last week after they met the requirements for candidates’ dossiers, such as collecting signatures. Twenty other candidacies had been rejected at that stage.
Wade is the son of former President Abdoulaye Wade (in office 2000-2012), and Sall is the former mayor of Dakar. The Council ruled that Sall, who has been sentenced to a five-year prison term on embezzlement charges, lacks the right to run, while Wade cannot run because he lacks an elector’s card – which he lacks because of an earlier judicial sentence. Both candidates have been blocked for essentially the same reason, although the applicable sections of the electoral code (L27 and L31 in Sall’s case, L115 in Wade’s) are different.
There are now five candidates remaining:
- Macky Sall, the President (BBY)
- Ousmane Sonko, parliamentary deputy (Pastef)
- El Hadj Issa Sall, parliamentary deputy (PUR)
- Madicke Niang, former Minister of Foreign Affairs (dissident PDS)
- Idrissa Seck, former Prime Minister (Rewmi)
And a victory by the president looks virtually assured now.
Sahel Blog 