Senegalese vote in poll that could end Wade's reign

DAKAR, Sunday

Senegalese voted on Sunday in a run-off election in which the 85-year-old incumbent Abdoulaye Wade is fighting off a mass opposition effort to foil his controversial bid to stay in power for a third term.

Having failed to deliver a crushing first-round victory a month ago, Mr Wade faces a stiff challenge from his former prime minister Macky Sall, who has the full weight of the opposition behind him.

Long lines snaked outside voting stations as people waited patiently to vote in the decider poll which comes after two months of suspense which has seen the reputation of one of Africa’s pioneer democracies marred by deadly riots.

“Everything is well organised and we are happy to carry out our civic duty,” said Leonard Diop, a middle-aged voter at a primary school in downtown Dakar where about 100 people were queued up to vote.

Several hundred were in the queue outside a polling station in Dakar’s working-class Derkle suburb.

“I want to vote in peace, and I want Macky Sall to win this election because times are hard in Senegal,” said Ndeye Fall, a teacher.

While Wade came first in the February 26 vote with nearly 35 percent of the vote to his protégé's 26 per cent, the octogenarian is in an uncomfortable position as Sall has secured the support of all the other candidates during the electoral campaign.

Mr Wade has faced stiff rebukes from abroad with former colonial power France and staunch ally the United States urging him to retire as he pursued his controversial bid for a third term by circumventing a constitutional term limit.

Despite having served two terms, a limit he himself introduced, Wade says later changes to the constitution allow him to serve two more mandates as the law is not retroactive.

This argument was upheld by the country’s constitutional council. Some 5.3 million voters are registered to cast their ballots in the run-off election, which will finish at 1800 GMT under the gaze of 300 international observers.

Both candidates have declared they cannot lose, raising fears that the poll’s outcome will inevitably be challenged.

“If all goes well, we should be at around 70 percent,” Mr Sall told AFP in an interview on the eve of the run-off. “Wade cannot win.”

With 12 of the 14 presidential candidates on his side, Mr Sall said victory was “inevitable” and reiterated that the opposition will engage a “legitimate resistance” if his rival rejects the outcome of the ballot.

“He (Wade) should by now be thinking of calling it a day and accepting the verdict of the ballot and take a permanent rest”, Mr Sall said.  

‘‘As I said the other day and will repeat today, I’m still worried about an eventual outburst of violence during or immediately after the runoff,’’ Mr Sall told reporters today morning shortly after casting his ballot. 

In one his series of interviews last week, he accused the ruling party of President Wade of recruiting thousands of militia with the view to spark violence throughout the country if the ageing leader lost the ballot.  

Almost immediately, Mr Sall’s speculations were justified by the discovery of several armed youths belonging to one of the prominent Muslim spiritual guides called Bethio Thioune around Mbour, about 80 kilometers outside the capital, Dakar.