10, February 2024
Protests in Senegal turn deadly as political crisis deepens over election delay 0
Senegal’s political crisis deepened as a second person died Saturday in increasingly violent protests against President Macky Sall’s decision to postpone upcoming presidential elections.
A 23-year-old man died Saturday after being shot during clashes in the capital Dakar, two of his relatives told AFP, while a 22-year-old student died Friday in the northern town of Saint-Louis in still uncertain circumstances.
“The international and regional community must bear witness to the excesses of this dying regime,” said presidential candidate Khalifa Sall (no relation).
Modou Gueye, a market vendor, took “a live round to the stomach” on Friday in the Colobane neighbourhood of the capital Dakar, said his brother Dame Gueye, 29, who was with him at the time.
His brother-in-law Mbagnick Ndiaye said he succumbed to his injuries Saturday morning.
Authorities have yet to confirm Gueye’s death, but videos posted to social media suggest there were others injured as well.
In Saint-Louis, Alpha Yoro Tounkara died on the campus of Gaston Berger University where he was studying geography, and a hundred of his classmates held an all-night vigil for him.
The Interior Ministry issued a statement denying that security forces had operated within the university campus.
Reputation in question
Anger has mounted since President Sall last week postponed until December a presidential election scheduled February 25. The postponement came hours before official campaigning was due to begin.
Protests were held across the country Friday and police made wide use of tear gas to keep crowds away from a main central square in Dakar, also closing main roads, rail lines and major markets.
Reporters Without Borders said at least five journalists were targeted by police in Dakar.
Senegal’s democratic record on the line as presidential vote delay sparks crisis
A new round of protests are planned for Tuesday.
Sall said he postponed the election because of a dispute between parliament and the Constitutional Council over potential candidates who were not allowed to stand, and has said he wants to begin a process of “appeasement and reconciliation.”
The postponement has been criticised by the United States and European Union. Senegal’s parliament backed the move after security forces stormed the chamber and removed some opposition deputies.
Parliament also voted to keep Sall in office until his successor takes office, which is unlikely to be before early 2025. His second term was due to end April 2.
The crisis has called into question the West African country’s reputation for democratic stability in a region beset by military coups.
Source: AFP
26, February 2024
ECOWAS Lifts sanctions on Niger and calls for unity within the economic bloc 0
After months of wrangling following coups d’etat in Mali Guinea, Burkina Faso and Niger, the West African regional bloc has lifted most sanctions imposed on Niger over last year’s coup, in a new push for dialogue following a series of political crises that have rocked the region in recent months.
A no-fly zone and border closures were among the sanctions being lifted “with immediate effect”, the president of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission, Omar Alieu Touray, said on Saturday.
The lifting of the sanctions is “on purely humanitarian grounds” to ease the suffering caused as a result, Touray told reporters after the bloc’s summit in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.
The summit aimed to address existential threats facing the region as well as implore three military-led nations that have quit the bloc – Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso – to rescind their decision.
The three were suspended from ECOWAS following recent coups.
Since then, they have declared their intention to permanently withdraw from the bloc, but ECOWAS has called for the three states to return.
Speaking in his opening remarks at the start of the summit, ECOWAS chairman and Nigerian President Bola Tinubu said the bloc “must re-examine our current approach to the quest for constitutional order in four of our Member States”, referring to the three suspended countries, as well as Guinea, which is also military-led.
Tinubu urged Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso to “reconsider the decision” and said they should “not perceive our organisation as the enemy”.
ECOWAS also said it had lifted certain sanctions on Malian individuals and some on junta-led Guinea, which has not said it wants to leave the bloc but has also not committed to a timeline to return to democratic rule.
Touray said some targeted sanctions and political sanctions remained place for Niger, without giving details.
However, ECOWAS placed “some conditions” on the lifting of the sanctions, he added. “They want the immediate release of President Mohamed Bazoum and members of his family.”
Niger’s President Bazoum was deposed in a military coup last July, prompting ECOWAS to suspend trade and impose sanctions on the country. He is still imprisoned in the presidential palace in Niamey. On the eve of the summit, his lawyers urged ECOWAS to demand his release.
Earlier this week, ECOWAS co-founder and former Nigerian military leader General Yakubu Gowon also called for the bloc to lift “all sanctions that have been imposed on Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali and Niger”.
“Even before today’s summit, there has been a change in tone, in language and also the approach of ECOWAS entirely to the sanctions and embargoes imposed on these three West African countries,” Idris said.
Easing sanctions is seen as a gesture of appeasement as ECOWAS tries to persuade the three states to remain in the nearly 50-year-old alliance and rethink a withdrawal. Their planned exit would undermine regional integration efforts and bring a messy disentanglement from the bloc’s trade and services flows, worth nearly $150bn a year.
ECOWAS on Saturday gave the three military-led countries “an opportunity to be members of the organisation once again”, Idris said, adding that they asked them to be part of “technical discussions of the ECOWAS bloc” without restoring them as full participating heads of state at summits or major conferences.
After Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger announced that they would permanently withdraw from the alliance and formed a grouping called the Alliance of Sahel States, “the ECOWAS institution itself was shaken”, Idris said.
“[ECOWAS] is an organisation that is gradually losing its steam, and there is the danger of it being fragmented … There is also the concern that unless ECOWAS brings these people back into the fold, there is the danger of coups spreading in West Africa,” he added.
Compiled by Alain A. Ebot
Source: Al Jazeera