Senegalese Interior Minister warns against acts of violence or sabotage before early parliamentary elections

MADRID 12 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –

The Minister of the Interior of Senegal, Jean-Baptiste Tine, warned this Tuesday against any act of violence or sabotage during the final days of the campaign ahead of the early parliamentary elections, which will be held this Sunday.

Tine has warned of the existence of “projects of acts of violence and sabotage” against campaign events and has stressed that there are “firm instructions” to the security forces to “systematically” detain people “considered suspicious.”

Likewise, he has stressed that the discovery of any weapon will be punished, after a ban on the possession of weapons was imposed from October 17 to December 17 to try to guarantee public safety during the elections.

For this reason, it has asked for “responsibility” from all actors so that the campaign “takes place in a climate of peace and serenity”, after disturbances and injuries have been reported in several incidents in recent days, according to the agency. Senegalese state news agency, APS.

The elections were called after the decision of the president of Senegal, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, to dissolve the National Assembly, controlled by an opposition coalition aligned with former president Macky Sall, to try to end the “institutional blockade” in the African country.

The decision came after Senegal’s Parliament, controlled by the Benoo Bokk Yakaar (BBY) opposition coalition, rejected a proposal raised by Faye to amend the Constitution as part of efforts to rationalize spending and reform public management in the country.

The current president won in the first round over former Prime Minister Amadou Ba, designated by the ruling party as the candidate of the former ruling party, Alliance for the Republic, to try to pick up Sall’s baton. Faye ran supported by the current Prime Minister, Ousmane Sonko, whose candidacy was rejected by the authorities.