A pack of contenders on the starting line. Seventy-nine people submitted their candidacy for the February 2024 presidential election in Senegal before the deadline of Tuesday evening, according to the Senegalese daily The sun.
Among these candidacies are those of the main favorites for the February 25, 2024 election: Amadou Ba, member of the ruling coalition and current Prime Minister of Senegal, the imprisoned opponent Ousmane Sonko, the former mayor of Dakar Khalifa Sall, Karim Wade ( son of ex-president Abdoulaye Wade) and Idrissa Seck, who came second in the 2019 presidential election.
Imprisoned since July, opponent Sonko submitted his candidacy
President since 2012, Macky Sall announced in July that he would not seek a new term. He appointed Amadou Ba to represent the majority. The Senegalese administration has refused to issue the necessary documents for a candidacy for the mandate of Ousmane Sonko, the central figure in a standoff of more than two years with the State which has given rise to several episodes of deadly unrest.
Ousmane Sonko, 49, has however submitted his candidacy to the Constitutional Council, a manager of his party’s communications unit, Ousseynou Ly, told AFP, without further details. Ousmane Sonko, imprisoned since the end of July on various charges, including calling for insurrection, denounces this affair and others in which he has been implicated as plots aimed at removing him from the presidential election.
The Constitutional Council must announce the list of candidates selected for the presidential election no later than January 20. The pre-campaign and the campaign will begin respectively on January 5 and February 4, 2024, the National Audiovisual Regulatory Council (CNRA) indicated in a press release on Tuesday.