Senegal - Recent History
The leaders of Senegal’s independence movement were inspired by French republicanism, and they adopted a constitution that incorporated the same principles. The Senegalese Republic would be indivisible, democratic, and secular, with recognized fundamental rights and freedoms, and French as the official language. The early connection of Senegal with France is important for understanding why Senegalese today prefer to compare their country to the world’s oldest democracies rather than to the rest of Africa.
President Senghor associated African socialism with Francophonie and the Négritude philosophy in the newly emergent nation-state. Negritude was a philosophy developed by the poets Aime Cesaire (Martinique), Leopold Senghor (Senegal), and Leon Damas (French Guiana), as students in Paris in the 1930's, founded on the basis of appreciation for the uniqueness and contributions of Africans (and descendants) to history. The doctrine is based on the physical survival of Africans as they mixed with other cultures giving fresh life and vitality. Many of the poems reflect a longing for Africa. The term first appeared in print in a poem by Aime Cesaire in "Cahier d'un retour au pays natal" (Paris, 1947). The term is also used in neo-African art and literature.
Senghor built upon the patron-client networks established by the French, and his prioritization of nation-building helped spare the country from the waves of military coups that swept Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. In the first years after independence, the primary challenge facing his Union Progressiste Sénégalaise (UPS) party was his rivalry with the more radical Prime Minister Mamadou Dia, which culminated in a 1962 coup attempt for which Dia was imprisoned.
Dia’s links to the powerful Sufi brotherhoods were broken, and thereafter only Senghor’s party enjoyed such ties. In 1963, Senghor ran unopposed for president and by 1966, he had established a de facto one-party state, although Senegal remained one of the most liberal and open societies in Africa. Press freedom was restricted but never entirely eliminated. Intellectuals, artists, and activists enjoyed freedom of expression under Senghor’s democratic-corporatist one-party rule, which in 1976, changed when Senghor reopened Senegalese politics to opposition parties of a predetermined ideological range, with his renamed Socialist Party (PS) the official socialist choice.
Although he had by the mid-1970s reintroduced limited multiparty competition, Senghor failed to create a competitive economic system. Rapid state-led economic growth did not materialize. The Senegalese economy was hurt by the oil shocks of the 1970s, and by the end of a second decade in power, Senegal’s founding president felt compelled to step down. In 1980, Senghor initiated a planned succession to appoint his prime minister as head of state, sparing his successor, Abdou Diouf, the risk of electoral competition. The result was a smooth and peaceful—though not yet democratic — transition, and Léopold Senghor became the first African president to leave power of his own volition.
Inheriting a country hard hit by economic crisis, Diouf was obliged to agree to the painful conditions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) structural adjustment programs and liberalize the economy. However, Senegal did not rise from the ranks of the world’s poorest countries. The combined effects of urbanization and a diverse and complex monetary economy began disrupting Senegal’s neo-patrimonial system. Religious leaders began to display more neutrality in the political sphere, and negotiated agreements with politicians more carefully, minimizing the risks inherent in choosing an ally, making sure to stand by the eventual winners.18 Politics in Senegal was changing. People began to feel emancipated from longstanding patronage networks. A newfound sense of citizenship was emerging, and people sensed the power of their vote.
Abdou Diouf, who had been in office since 1981, and the President's Socialist Party (PS) again won presidential elections in February and legislative elections in May 1993 (gaining 84 of the National Assembly's 120 seats). The opposition parties, led by the Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS, which won 27 seats), charged extensive fraud in the presidential and legislative elections. However, after much controversy and delay, the Constitutional Court subsequently certified the presidential and later the legislative results as official. International observers noted that there had been irregularities in the presidential voting, but declared the election had been generally "free and fair."
The postelection period was further marred, first by the assassination of Babacar Seye, the Vice President of the Constitutional Court (Supreme Court), as votes were being certified for the National Assembly election, and then by the Government detaining and later charging several opposition figures, including Abdoulaye Wade, presidential contender on the PDS ticket, with the Seye murder.
Diouf was defeated by Abdoulaye Wade in March 2000, and he handed over power peacefully in Senegal’s first alternation of power. Wade took up the reins of the patronage system handed down from his two predecessors. He built infrastructure such as highways and bridges and transformed the capital city. He initially enjoyed high levels of popular approval and was re-elected in 2007. But Wade’s heavy hand aggravated the inherent defects of patronage politics, and he purposefully weakened national institutions. By 2008, Wade’s public approval had fallen below 30 percent, as shown in the results of the Afrobarometer survey of that year.
Defying low popular approval and a growing dissatisfaction with the performance of Senegal’s democracy under his presidency, Wade contrived to stand for a third term in 2012, arguing that although the 2001 Constitution now limited the president to two terms, his election to his first seven-year term in 2000 came under the previous constitution, which did not provide for term limits.20 By presidential decree on November 23, 2010, Wade set February 26, 2012 as the date for the next election. Administration of the election would be handled by the Ministry of the Interior, headed by a PDS stalwart, Ousmane Ngom.
In the lead-up to the election, Wade proposed two changes to the Constitution. The first would replace Senegal’s majoritarian system that required a second round of voting if no candidate received more than 50 percent of the vote with a plurality requirement of only 25 percent of the electorate to win in the first round. The second proposed change was for the vice president to be elected on the same ticket with the president. Opponents perceived self-interest in these proposals. The office of vice president had been created by an earlier constitutional revision, but Wade had not appointed anyone to the post.
With the proposed constitutional amendment for the vice president to be elected on the same ticket with the president, many suspected Wade intended to appoint his son Karim, already a powerful minister in his cabinet, as vice president, and then run with him on the same ticket, expecting to win against a fragmented opposition in an election to be administered by a Wade political ally that would require only 25 percent of the vote to win. Wade would turn 86 shortly after the election, and his son Karim would be in a position to succeed him as president.
Concern over Wade standing for a third term, the two proposed changes to the Constitution, and the question of who would administer the 2012 presidential and legislative elections galvanized opposition parties and civil society organizations. Young people made up a large portion of this nascent movement. A Comité de Veille et de Suivi des Recommandations (Vigilance Committee for Monitoring the Recommendations) was created in January 2011 to negotiate reform of the electoral process. As the Arab Spring swept through Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, in Senegal, the president of the African Assembly for the Defense of Human Rights (RADDHO), Alioune Tine, organized opposing parties, movements, and unions into a group called Touche Pas à Ma Constitution! (Don’t Touch My Constitution!). Citizens’ movements like Y’en a Marre (Had Enough) also protested independently.
Events reached a head on June 23, 2011 when the National Assembly met to vote on Wade’s proposed constitutional changes. Opponents of the amendments, large numbers of them young people, fought riot police in downtown Dakar, charging toward the National Assembly throwing stones before being pushed back with water cannons and tear gas. As riot police pulled back to positions inside the parliamentary compound, the protesters occupied the plaza in front of the National Assembly, chanting, “free our country.” Other protesters broke off from the main group and fought supporters of the ruling party between Dakar’s main Sandaga market and the National Cathedral. With clouds of tear gas and smoke from burning cars rising above downtown, President Wade’s spokesman announced on state-run radio that the ruling party was abandoning changes to the percentage clause. Justice Minister Cheikh Tidiane Sy told lawmakers that the constitutional article requiring a president to be elected with an absolute majority would remain unchanged.
Further concessions by Wade ensued. In July, he removed responsibility for administering the elections from the Ministry of the Interior and gave it to a newly created Ministry in Charge of Elections (MCE), headed by the electoral technocrat, Cheikh Gueye. He refused, however, to withdraw his candidacy. When his adversaries reminded Wade that he had previously promised not to run for a third term, he replied “Maa waxoon waxeet” (“What I said I take back”).
On January 27, 2012, the Constitutional Court of Senegal ruled that Wade’s first term did not count under the new constitution, and he was allowed to run for a third term. But a more active and demanding Senegalese citizenry had emerged through the mass protests, capable of using their votes to deliver a message. Opposition to Wade was coalescing, and it had a name: Mouvement de 23 Juin.
The election on February 26 gave Wade 34.8 percent of the vote, less than the majority required, forcing a March 25 runoff against Macky Sall, the runner up, with 26.5 percent of the vote. Macky Sall defeated Wade in the second round, and Wade accepted the results. Macky Sall was inaugurated as Senegal’s fourth president on 02 April 2012.
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