The ruling party in Senegal is heading towards a very large absolute majority in Parliament the day after legislative elections supposed to give the president and the Prime Minister the means to carry out broad reforms, according to media projections published Monday.
Radio RFM credits Pastef with 119 seats out of 165 in the National Assembly and the Dakaractu information site attributes it to up to 131 deputies, estimates based on provisional results. The government daily Le Soleil headlines on “the Pastef surge”.
The electoral bodies have until Tuesday evening to publish the provisional official results at the department level.
But these projections announce the possible “overwhelming” victory demanded by Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, president of Pastef, to apply the agenda of rupture and transformation of the State which brought his second Bassirou Diomaye Faye to the head of the country in the presidential election last March.
Several newspapers speak of a “raid” which makes the Prime Minister, who was still in prison ten days before the presidential election in March, the master of the political game.
“Senegal Moy Sonko” (“Senegal is Sonko” in Wolof), headlines the newspaper Le Quotidien, which is nevertheless critical of the government, diverting the slogan with which Pastef convinced presidential voters that they should vote for Bassirou Diomaye Faye , it was like voting for Mr. Sonko.
The latter was prevented from running by the invalidation of his candidacy due to a final conviction for defamation against a minister.
Pastef’s opponents seem crushed. The Takku Wallu Senegal coalition of former President Macky Sall would only win 15 parliamentary mandates, according to projections from the same media.
Bassirou Diomaye Faye was elected president in the first round in March, devoid of any executive experience but pulled to the top by the enthusiasm and aspiration for change of a young population tested by three years of political confrontation and economic crisis .
He appointed head of government his fiery mentor Sonko, who should have been in his place if he had not been declared ineligible.
For months after the March presidential election, these advocates of “left-wing Pan-Africanism” led a conflictual coexistence with an Assembly still dominated by the former presidential majority. Mr. Faye dissolved it as soon as constitutional deadlines permitted, in September.
– Keep promises –
Around 7.3 million voters were therefore called on Sunday to elect 165 deputies who will sit for five years.
Voters had to decide whether or not to give the Faye-Sonko duo the means to keep their promises: to improve the life of a population, a large part of which struggles on a daily basis to make ends meet, to share with them the income from natural resources such as hydrocarbons and fishing which would have been sold off abroad, fight corruption, transform the State and its justice…
The cost of living remains a major concern for the population, as does unemployment which reaches more than 20%. The new leaders are in turn confronted with the wave of these hundreds of compatriots who leave each month in canoes to seek a better future in Europe.
Historically, the Senegalese are used to making their choice consistent in the presidential and legislative elections, and the party of African Patriots of Senegal for work, ethics and fraternity (Pastef) of Mr. Sonko was favored by the experts.
Opposite, the opposition was dispersed. She campaigned by taking up the grievance formulated by a certain number of Senegalese according to which, for eight months, Mr. Sonko spoke a lot and acted little. The person concerned defends himself by arguing the state in which he and Mr. Faye found the country, and the multiple resistance to his ambition to change practices and the system.
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