Senegal’s top constitutional body has ruled that Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko can run in upcoming parliamentary elections, rejecting an opposition coalition appeal against his candidacy.
The Takku Wallu Senegal coalition led by former president Macky Sall had claimed that Sonko was ineligible to stand in the snap polls.
They pointed to his June 2023 sentencing in absentia to two years in prison for “corrupting youth”.
But in a decision published late Thursday, the Constitutional Council declared the appeal “inadmissible”.
Only the interior minister can refer a case regarding a candidate’s eligibility, it ruled — and that was not the case here.
Senegal is set to vote for a new parliament on November 17, after President Bassirou Diomaye Faye dissolved the opposition-dominated national assembly in September.
Longtime rivals Sonko and Sall were at the centre of a three-year standoff between 2021 and 2023 which resulted in dozens of deaths.
Sonko was imprisoned for more than seven months under the Sall administration, and following a string of legal battles was blocked from standing in the March presidential election.
Sonko’s former deputy Faye won the presidency with more than 54 percent of the vote, on a promise of a radical break with the past.
In its decision, the Constitutional Council also authorised the candidacy of opposition figure Barthelemy Dias, mayor of the capital Dakar, who was convicted of homicide in 2011.
AFP
