In this post, Sophia Moestrup analyses the repercussions of the local elections held at the end of June in Senegal. This post originally appeared on the blog Presidential Power.
President Macky Sall went into the June 29, 2014 local polls determined to make a score for his alliance Bennoo Bokk Yaakaar (BBY – “together for the same hope,” in Wolof) in general, and for his party, the Alliance for the Republic (APR), in particular – even if it meant going against other candidates from BBY in localities where the alliance could not agree on a list. Preliminary results indicate that while BBY may have won a majority of the electoral districts (70% or more), it lost most of the big cities to the opposition or to dissidents within the ruling coalition.
Up for grabs were 2,700 councilors seats, to be filled through a mixed majoritarian-proportional electoral system. Newly elected councilors will in turn elect mayors and heads of provinces. Final, consolidated results are not yet available, but results published at the departmental level indicate that BBY has lost in Dakar and several cities, including Thiès, Touba, M’Bour, Dagana and Ziguinchor. In Saint Louis, Mansour Faye, a brother-in-law of President Sall, managed to win with 800 hundred votes ahead of Ahmet Fall Braya of the Democratic Party of Senegal (PDS) of former President Wade. Voter turn-out appears to have been low, below 40%, similar to the 37% voter turn-out for the legislative elections in 2012 (International IDEA).
In Dakar, the chief electoral prize due to its large body of voters, BBY lost big to incumbent mayor Khalifa Sall. Khalifa Sall ran with his own coalition after failing to get the backing of BBY, though he belongs to the Socialist Party (PS), a member of the BBY coalition that supported Macky Sall in the presidential run-off in 2012. The PS is the party of former President Abdou Diouf and of founding father Léopold Sédar Senghor, in power from 1960 to 2000.
Prime Minister Aminata Touré (APR) was the biggest loser in Dakar – where she stood against Khalifa Sall in the commune of Grand Yoff, one of the 19 communes that form the district of Dakar. Khalifa Sall won in 15 of those communes, including Grand Yoff. The PM was swiftly dismissed from her position on July 4th after serving 10 months in office. President Sall appointed Mohamed Dionne to replace her on July 6th, the third prime minister in less than three years. Dionne is a close aid of Macky Sall, and a former employee of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).
What do the local election results mean for Macky Sall and BBY? The BBY coalition appears to have been weakened by the polls due to the lack of internal consensus on party lists in key constituencies. Analysts point out that when former President Wade lost the major cities in the 2009 local elections, it was a harbinger of things to come in the 2012 presidential race. With Khalifa Sall as a potentially significant adversary in the 2017 presidential poll, Macky Sall may decide that the APR and PS are no longer “together for the same hope.”
