Senegal held a hotly contested presidential race on Sunday morning after months of uncertainty and unrest that have tested the West African nation’s reputation as a stable democracy in a region that has experienced a wave of coups in recent years.
Roads in Senegal’s capital were deserted early in the morning, with the country’s elite police force stationed across the city in armored vehicles. Outside the polling center, police checked voter cards and men and women in formal attire waited in line.
The election comes weeks after President Macky Sall tried unsuccessfully to postpone it until the end of the year. Sall is barred from running for a third term due to constitutional term limits. The vote therefore takes place during Ramadan, the holy month when devout Muslims fast from dawn to dusk.
The election will be Senegal’s fourth democratic transfer of power since its independence from France in 1960. The electoral process was marred by violence and riots, with hundreds of opposition protesters arrested and jailed.
A total of 19 candidates, including one woman, are running, the largest number of candidates in the country’s history.
“This will be the most competitive election since the introduction of multi-party politics,” Tochi Eni-Kalu, Africa analyst at Eurasia Group, told The Associated Press.
Analysts said no candidate was expected to win more than 50% of the vote, meaning a runoff between the leading candidates was widely expected. These include former Prime Minister Amadou Ba and Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who is backed by popular opposition figure Ousmane Sonko.
Sonko, who finished third in the last election, was barred from running in January due to a previous defamation conviction. He has faced a series of legal troubles in recent years that supporters say are part of an administration effort to undermine his candidacy.
Other potential front-runners include Khalifa Sall, the former mayor of Dakar who is not related to the president, and Idrissa Sek, a former prime minister in the early 2000s and runner-up in the 2019 presidential race. Seck).
Analysts said two candidates dropped out of support for Faye’s candidacy this week, a sign of the beginnings of coalition building that could determine the outcome of the race.
The top concern for many Senegalese voters is the economy, which has been squeezed by rising food and energy prices, in part because of the war in Ukraine. Widespread unemployment among the country’s youth has forced thousands to risk their lives on perilous journeys to the West in search of work.
“Employment is really the priority. Everyone can see that unemployment is taking over,” said political activist Oumy Sarr. “The second priority is that the cost of living in Senegal is very high now. How to improve people’s living conditions? Inflation is rising and everyone is tired.”
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