Issued on: 12/08/2022 – 14:52
Senegalese President Macky Sall’s coalition narrowly won parliamentary elections last month, according to the final results, but has maintained its absolute majority in parliament thanks to a new alliance.
The president’s coalition, which includes his Alliance for the Republic (APR) party and other parties, won 82 seats out of 165 in the national assembly, the Constitutional Council, Senegal’s highest court, said late Thursday.
The figure was lower than the 125 it won in 2017.
But Sall’s camp won an absolute majority of 83 seats after joining forces with an opposition MP, Pape Diop, a former chairman of the assembly and senate.
Diop, whose coalition won one seat, told a news conference in Dakar on Thursday that he had joined the coalition to ensure that Senegal does not face “blockages to the functioning of its institutions”.
Since Senegal is headed by the president, Diop warned that “a national assembly under opposition control will inevitably lead to an institutional crisis”.
The opposition alliance won a total of 80 seats, including 56 for “Yewwi Askan Wi” (“Free the People” in Wolof) — a coalition led by main opponent Ousmane Sonko — and 24 for the “Wallu Senegal” (“Save Senegal”) coalition, led by former President Abdoulaye Wade.
Two other MPs come from the ranks of two small party coalitions.
Senegal’s main opposition alliance announced this week that it would not appeal the results to the constitutional council due to a lack of confidence in the independence of the court.
The council has rejected allegations of influence by the ruling party.
Yewwi Askan Wi had complained on Aug. 4 that the vote counting commission “refused” to let her verify voting records in four places in the north of the country, a stronghold of Sall.
With the presidential election in 2024, the opposition had wanted to control parliament in hopes of imposing an inconvenient ‘cohabitation’ arrangement on the ruling camp.
The president, who was elected for seven years in 2012 and reelected for five years in 2019, has so far remained vague about his plans for the future.
He has pledged to appoint a prime minister — a post he abolished in 2019 and reinstated in December 2021 — from the winning party in last month’s election.
(AFP)