Senegal’s president may decide to reduce term

Senegal’s President Macky Sall has said he would announce the decision whether or not he will reduce his mandate from seven to five years in 2015.

One of the country’s leading online publications Dakaractu.com on Monday quoted sources as saying that the decision has further been delayed due to the miserable defeat of the ruling party in last months local polls.

Both President Sall’s ex-Prime Minister Ms Aminata Touré and Mr Allé Lo who was the deputy speaker of parliament as well as his outspoken minister of communications were defeated in the polls.

The catastrophic gubernatorial and local polls have thrown the ruling party into so much a disarray that many other persons including the President’s father in law have lost their seats in government.

Analysts have begun hinting that “last month’s election defeat could deal a deadly blow to President Sall’s dream of a second mandate in the 2017 polls.’’

Dakaractu.com also quoted the latest edition of the Paris-based Jeune Afrique magazine attributing President Sall’s delay in deciding on the presidential mandate as due also the upcoming high profile trial of his predecessor’s son, Mr Karim Wade.

The glaring success of ex-President Wade’s party in getting backing of opposition parties and civil rights movement over the prolonged detention of Karim Wade are all weighing on President Sall’s regime.

This  situation is causing a lot of uneasiness and apprehension  among the electorate and civil society organisations in Senegal.

After the election defeat the sacked PM, Ms Aminata Touré expressed fears about her safety and wrote to President Sall appealing that her security guards be maintained.

SACKED PREMIER'S FEARS

Following the hand-over ceremony to her successor, Mr Mohamed Dionne, Ms Touré’s paramilitary guards were withdrawn as we all as those deployed to her private and official residences.

Senegal’s leading online publication Seneweb reported that the sacked premier’s fears were justifiable given the fact that it was during her mandate that several dignitaries were arrested and are being remanded ahead of trials.

The publication cited the issue of Karim Wade and along with over a dozen former senior government officials held in remand jails for swindling public funds totalling over US$5 billion.

Equally worrisome, the source said, was the arrest and imprisonment of a prominent and influential Islamic spiritual guide, Bethio Thioune. Mr Thioune, married to six women, is being linked to the killing of two of his followers.

He was jailed and subsequently released temporarily on health reasons and rearrested when he returned from treatment in France. The other high profile arrest and detention under the former Premier’s mandate, was the long-time renegade Chadian dictator, Habre.