Opposition candidates in\u00a0Senegal’s presidential election\u00a0have accused the authorities of dragging their feet on setting a new date for the vote after a court ruled that a 10-month postponement was unlawful.<\/p>\n
President Macky Sall last week promised he would\u00a0abide by the Constitutional Council’s request\u00a0for the vote to be scheduled as soon as possible.<\/p>\n
The court blocked Sall\u2019s parliament-backed\u00a0decree to postpone the election,\u00a0originally scheduled for Feb. 25.<\/p>\n
Sall faced significant domestic and international pressure to accept the council’s ruling after the crisis\u00a0triggered violent street protests\u00a0and warnings of authoritarian overreach in one of coup-hit West Africa’s more stable democracies.<\/span><\/p>\n But a new date has yet to be set, stoking concern among opposition candidates, some of whom are pushing for the election to take place before Sall’s mandate ends on April 2.<\/p>\n In a joint statement late on Tuesday, 16 of the 19 presidential contenders complained about an “inexplicable slowness” enacting the council’s ruling.<\/span><\/p>\n They said the slow resumption of electoral operations showed Sall’s unwillingness to launch a process that would lead to a change of power.<\/p>\n The presidency did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n Asked in a press conference on Tuesday about the end of Sall’s mandate on April 2, Justice Minister A\u00efssata Tall Sall said it was up for debate.<\/p>\n “I do not know if the presidential election will happen (before April 2),” she said.<\/p>\n “But as for those who say there will be a power vacuum from April 2… it’s a debate between lawyers and constitutional experts,” she added.<\/p>\n Senegal had never previously delayed a presidential vote and many of the opposition saw the attempted postponement as an effort by the president to extend his mandate via an “institutional coup.”<\/p>\n Sall, 62, is not standing for re-election, having reached the constitutional limit of two terms in power.<\/span><\/p>\n He has said the vote’s postponement was needed due to a dispute over the candidate list and alleged corruption within the Constitutional Council, which it denies.<\/p>\n The Constitutional Council\u00a0published\u00a0an amended list of 19 presidential candidates on Tuesday that was almost unchanged from the original. Just one candidate was removed because she had withdrawn her application.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Opposition candidates in\u00a0Senegal’s presidential election\u00a0have accused the authorities of dragging their feet on setting a new date for the vote after a court ruled that a 10-month postponement was unlawful. President Macky Sall last week promised he would\u00a0abide by the Constitutional Council’s request\u00a0for the vote to be scheduled as soon as possible. The court blocked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9496,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"Reuters","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"0","show_view_counter":"0","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"0","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"0","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"0","show_popup_post":"0","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":"","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"","hide":""},"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,27],"tags":[313,283],"class_list":["post-10895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-west-africa","tag-macky-sall","tag-senegal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}