Senegalese are voting today, Sunday in a key legislative election that is set to determine if the country’s newly-elected president can carry out ambitious reforms. In the polls, Senegalese will be voting for 165 lawmakers in the nation’s assembly, where the party of President Bassirou Diomaye Faye currently does not hold a majority.
The Polls opened today in Senegal’s parliamentary elections as President Bassirou Diomaye Faye aims for a resounding majority to see through the promises of ambitious reforms that swept him to power eight months ago.
More than seven million of the country’s 7 million people are eligible to vote on Sunday to pick members of the 165-seat National Assembly for a five-year term. Polls opened at 8 am GMT and are expected to close by 6 pm GMT.
In the parliamentary elections today, Former President, Macky Sall is leading the Takku Wallu opposition platform.
Faye, who was elected in March this year on an anti-establishment platform, said that had blocked him from executing the reforms he pledged during his campaign, including fighting corruption, reviewing fishing permits for foreign companies, and securing a bigger share of the country’s natural resources for the population.
His prime minister Ousmane Sonko was not present in the assembly where the opposition threatened a vote of no confidence.
Politicians in Senegal were busy with tense electoral campaigns last Friday. The campaigns were marked by sporadic clashes between different party supporters. Clashes erupted between supporters in central Senegal in recent weeks and the headquarters of an opposition party was set on fire in the capital Dakar, the Ministry of the interior stated last Monday.
Last Tuesday, Ousmane Sonko, the country’s prime minister and a popular opposition figure who helped catapult Faye to victory, denounced attacks against supporters of his party PASTEF in Dakar and other cities.
“May each patriot they have attacked and injured, be proportionally avenged. We will exercise our legitimate right to respond,” he wrote on Twitter X, before back-pedaling and asking his supporters to remain peaceful in a speech later that day.
Last month Sonko’s vehicle was attacked with stones as clashes broke out between his supporters and unidentified attackers while he was campaigning in Koungueul, in the center of the country. The leader of an allied party, former minister Malick Gackou, had his arm broken in the incident, according to local media.
In September, President Faye dissolved the opposition-led parliament, paving the way for a snap legislative election.
