Senegalese police fired tear gas on Monday to disperse protesters outside parliament as lawmakers debated \u200ba constitutional amendment that would expand parliamentary powers \u200cand reduce those of the president, a proposal critics say could upset the balance of power in government.<\/p>\n
Senegalese civil society \u200bgroups and political parties say the reform \u200bis an attempted power grab by parliament speaker \u2060and former Prime Minister\u00a0Ousmane Sonko.<\/p>\n
Dispute over constitutional reform risks \u200bdeepening political divisions in Senegal, particularly between President Bassirou \u200bDiomaye Faye and Sonko.<\/p>\n
Sonko’s dismissal\u00a0in May underscored a widening split over reforms and\u00a0the response to\u00a0a mounting\u00a0debt crisis.<\/p>\n
Relations between \u200bthem remained tense after Sonko was elected speaker of \u200bparliament.<\/p>\n
The push for constitutional reform has been driven by the ruling \u200cPastef \u2060party, led by Sonko. Proposed changes include a provision prohibiting a sitting president from serving as leader of a political party. Faye is also a member \u200bof Pastef, but \u200bno longer \u2060holds any official role in the party.<\/p>\n
A political coalition supporting the president has \u200bcalled for an immediate withdrawal of the \u200bbill \u2060and said Faye should be able to fully exercise his powers.<\/p>\n
Faye was elected two years ago, backed by Sonko, \u2060a \u200bcharismatic figure with a strong \u200byouth following, who was barred from running himself due to a defamation \u200bconviction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Senegalese police fired tear gas on Monday to disperse protesters outside parliament as lawmakers debated \u200ba constitutional amendment that would expand parliamentary powers \u200cand reduce those of the president, a proposal critics say could upset the balance of power in government. Senegalese civil society \u200bgroups and political parties say the reform \u200bis an attempted power […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13915,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","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_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,33,27],"tags":[1758,1203,283],"class_list":["post-21245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-politics","category-west-africa","tag-bassirou-diomaye-faye","tag-ousmane-sonko","tag-senegal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21245","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=21245"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21246,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21245\/revisions\/21246"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}