This was one of the strong demands of the opposition and civil society movements: the holding of local elections. However, once again, we are moving towards a new postponement of these election deadlines.The Senegalese National Assembly will examine in plenary the project to postpone local elections and extend the mandate of departmental and municipal councillors on Friday, April 2, 2021. This decision was taken on Monday, March 29, 2021 at the end of a meeting of the Conference of Presidents composed of the President and Vice-Presidents of the National Assembly, the Presidents of Committees, the General Rapporteur of the General Economy Committee, the Speakers of the Parliamentary Group and the representative of the cross-benchers.
The local elections will no doubt be postponed for the umpteenth time since parliamentarians are convened in plenary on Friday 29 March to examine the draft. The opposition, civil society and the non-aligned pole are totally against the idea of a new dismissal of these elections, which should in principle be held in June 2019. They hold the government accountable for the consequences of this delay. “If the audit of the file has started since mid-February 2021, the power just informed us, this day 24 March 2021, that the evaluation of the electoral process start on 01 April 2021.All these clarifications are made to show that the noted administrative delays are the sole responsibility of the Government.”, said Moctar Sourang, coordinator of the National Resistance Front (FRN).
For him, all the stakeholders are ready to go to the elections once and for all, but the majority in power prefers to stay in the dilatory. This attitude is incomprehensible, especially since Senegal has just emerged from a tense context marked by a series of violent demonstrations that resulted in the death of 14 young citizens.” All political poles and civil society agree to hold local elections by the end of 2021. Only the majority pole is proposing a postponement to February 2022, despite all the technical arguments put forward by the other stakeholders. ‘ , he said.
With the government’s current approach, there is every reason to believe that we are moving towards a coupling of the local elections and the general elections scheduled for 2022. The future will build us.
