The Head of State delivered his very first end-of-year message to the nation this Tuesday, December 31, 2024. During this speech lasting more than 16 minutes, President Bassirou Diomaye Diakhar Faye, deploring “the noted inflation of political parties, favored by too lax an application of the texts in force”, announced the holding, in the near future, of consultations in the aim of bringing more readability, more transparency and more rationalization to the Senegalese political system.
The situation of proliferation of political parties that Senegal has been facing for several years will soon be an old memory. Indeed, in his end-of-year speech to the nation delivered on Tuesday, December 31, the President of the Republic, Bassirou Diomaye Diakhar Faye announced his intention to clean up the political scene. Indeed, believing in this first end-of-year speech to the nation to have carefully deciphered the powerful message coming from the bottom of the ballot boxes of the vast majority of Senegalese who “lent” him the keys to open the doors to systemic change as well as the windows of national transformation, in righteousness, probity and exemplarity jub, jubal, jubbanti! “.
The Head of State announced the upcoming opening of consultations with stakeholders on our political system. “The noted inflation of political parties, favored by an overly lax application of the texts in force, has led to excessive fragmentation and worrying inflation, detrimental to quality democratic breathing” deplored President Faye who immediately announced that “in the near future, consultations on our political system will be held with the aim of bringing more readability, more transparency and more rationalization.”
A true sea serpent of the Senegalese political system, the question of rationalization of political parties and their financing has punctuated national political life in recent years. From four legally recognized groups under Senghor, to 45 during the 20 years of the Diouf regime, political parties experienced an explosion under Wade (188) and Macky Sall (339) who finished erasing the ideological demarcation lines, leaving room for a commitment driven by personal interests (transhumance). On the eve of each election, this question of the rationalization of political parties and their financing has always been a subject of debate since the 1990s.
Indeed, governed by law n° 81-17 of May 6, 1981 which was modified in 1989 with the introduction of provisions prohibiting “any financing from abroad” under penalty of dissolution for any party which directly or indirectly receives subsidies from abroad or from foreigners established in Senegal”. Proposals to modify this law to adapt it to the current Senegalese political context have always been blocked by the different majorities that have succeeded one another in power. Sometimes included on the menu of consultations between political actors on the review of the electoral process, organized on the eve of each election, it has never been the subject of consensus. As a result, political parties continue to grow like mushrooms in very dubious conditions. Because many of them do not hold annual congresses, much less transmit their financial statements to the services of the Ministry of the Interior. To this, we must add the problem of participation in elections. Indeed, contrary to the provisions of this law on political parties, half of the political groups created in recent years do not make the conquest and conservation of power their aim.
Last Wednesday, April 3, in his very first message to the nation on the eve of the April 4 holiday, President Bassirou Diomaye Diakhar Faye announced a battery of measures that he intends to implement, immediately, including the rationalization political parties and their financing. But also the registration on the electoral register concomitantly with the issuance of the national identity document which will certainly impact the question of the registration of first-time voters.
To achieve these reforms, the Head of State also announced broad consultations with the political class and civil society will be organized..
Nando Cabral GOMIS
