The Senegalese Parliament adopted on Monday evening, amid great confusion, the bill postponing the presidential election until December 15. Opposition deputies attempted to obstruct the vote and were evacuated by the gendarmerie.
The Senegalese Parliament therefore voted on Monday in favor of postponing the presidential election until December 15. The vote took place in chaos after opposition MPs were forcibly removed from the chamber.
Security forces stormed the legislative building as lawmakers attempted to block the voting process.
The bill finally adopted extends the mandate of outgoing President Macky Sall which was initially due to end on April 2.
As lawmakers debated the bill, security forces fired tear gas at protesters gathered outside parliament. Many protesters were arrested as they took to the streets of the capital, Dakar, burning tires and criticizing the country’s leader.
Faced with the risk of riots, the authorities have also restricted access to mobile Internet due to the dissemination of several hateful and subversive messages relayed on social networks “in a context of threats and disturbances of order audience”.
As for the private television channel Walf, whose signal was cut during the broadcast of Sunday’s protests, said its broadcasting license had been revoked.
“The government’s brutal closure of access to the Internet via mobile data and to the broadcast of Walf TV (…) constitutes a flagrant attack on the right to freedom of expression and the right of the press protected by the constitution of Senegal,” Amnesty International’s regional office for West and Central Africa said in a statement.
On Monday, two opposition parties also filed a request with the Constitutional Council to contest the postponement of the presidential election decided by the president. No one knows at this stage what will become of this request.
Analysts say Senegal’s political crisis is testing one of Africa’s most stable democracies, at a time when the region is grappling with a wave of coups.
Macky Sall, who said last July that he would not seek a third term, cited an electoral dispute between parliament and the judiciary over candidacies as the reason for the postponement, but opposition leaders and candidates have rejected this decision, calling it an “institutional coup d’état”.
The African Union, for its part, urged the government to organize the elections “as soon as possible” and called on all those involved “to resolve any political dispute through consultation, understanding and civilized dialogue.”
Political tensions have been high in Senegal for almost a year.