Senegal: Former President Sall Explains Why He’s Running in Nov 17 Legislative Elections

Cape Town — Former President of Senegal, Macky Sall, is a candidate in the legislative elections on November 17 and is at the head of the national list for the coalition Takku Wallu Sénégal.

The coalition was formed around his party, the Alliance for the Republic and the Senegalese Democratic Party, which is the political party of his predecessor Abdoulaye Wade.

The Senegalese Press Agency in Dakar reports that the former president wrote a letter to his supporters and Senegalese citizens, in which the leader of the Alliance for the Republic (APR), gives his reasons for accepting the coalition nomination. Sall’s letter begins by painting a “dark picture” of the country’s situation, eight months after his 12-year term as president ended.

“With the support of men and women of value, dedicated and competent, I left a country resolutely established on the trajectory of emergence, with one of the rare economies in the world to display a positive growth rate after the devastating impact of COVID-19, and despite the collateral effects of a major war,” wrote Macky Sall.

Sall writes that he left a peaceful country, with an amnesty law adopted in a spirit of forgiveness and national reconciliation after three years of destructive violence, and one where “public governance and legal security inspire confidence conducive to investment that generates growth and employment”.

“Eight months later,” Sall writes, “and twice in the space of a few weeks, our country’s sovereign rating has been downgraded by two rating agencies, following untimely, slanderous and unfounded assertions, the last of which, even more grotesque, which concerns an alleged bank account with a thousand billion FCFA was quickly denied by banking professionals and could not fool anyone.”

His decision to lead the coalition is “mobilization aimed at stopping the growing dangers in the country”.

Meanwhile, President Bassirou Diomaye Faye assured voters that the upcoming vote on November 17 will be transparent and fair, calling on all participants to exercise “restraint”. Faye dissolved Parliament just six months after taking office, and after saying that working with the assembly had grown difficult after members refused to start discussions on the Budget law and rejected efforts to dissolve wasteful state institutions. Faye’s announcement followed earlier promises by Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko to launch a wide-ranging probe into government corruption.