16 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Senegal’s Interior Minister, Antoine Félix Abdoulaye Diome, announced Thursday that presidential elections will be held in the country on February 25, 2024 in the context of increased tensions over the trial against opposition candidate Ousmane Sonko, candidate for The elections.
The announcement comes on the same day that Sonko’s trial in a Dakar court has been postponed again after Tourism Minister Mame Mbaye Niang filed a defamation lawsuit against him.
Sonko, one of the potential opposition candidates for the 2024 presidential elections, appeared briefly this Thursday morning in court while his supporters clashed with police officers outside the building, as reported by the newspaper ‘Le Soleil ‘.
The trial has been postponed until March 16 after a suspension of about thirty minutes in a process that the opponent, who is also being tried in a case for alleged rape and death threats, has repeatedly branded political persecution.
Sonko, leader of Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity (PASTEF), was arrested in 2021 after some twenty opposition parliamentarians filed an appeal before the Constitutional Court against the withdrawal of their parliamentary immunity.
The arrest of the opponent, who came in third place in the 2019 presidential elections, unleashed a wave of protests that resulted in several deaths. Finally, he was released, although the proceedings against him are still ongoing.
The Senegalese opposition has denounced on several occasions that the current president, Macky Sall, has plans to run for a third term, although he has ruled out that he is going to opt for this path. The Senegalese constitution limits the total number of terms to two and an attempt to extend his stay in power could lead to instability.
