A voter casts his ballot at a voting station in the fishing village of Ndayane on November 17, 2024, during Senegal's parliamentary elections. with the country's new leaders aiming for a clear majority to see through their ambitious reform agenda. Having secured an overwhelming parliamentary majority, the Pastef will allow President Bassirou Diomaye Faye and his administration to push through his reform agenda without resistance, says the writer. Picture: JOHN WESSELS / AFP
Dr. Sizo Nkala
SENEGAL held parliamentary elections on November 17 as parties competed for seats in the country’s 165-seat National Assembly.
The provisional results suggest that the governing party, the African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity (Pastef) have successfully secured a parliamentary majority with projections indicating that the party might win 131 out of 165 seats.
Opposition leaders including former President Macky Sall have conceded defeat and congratulated the new ruling party. Sall’s coalition controlled a slim majority of 83 in parliament while the Pastef only had 54 seats. The elections came after the new President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who assumed office in March, dissolved parliament in September and called for snap elections. He argued that the parliament, where the opposition enjoyed a majority, had become a stumbling block to his government’s reform agenda since he won the presidential elections in March.
Faye and his party campaigned on the promises of combating corruption, changing the terms of the fishing permits of foreign companies, effective governance of the country’s natural resources and the consolidation of economic sovereignty. The International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s withholding of a US$1.9 billion to Senegal after an audit revealed a significant underreporting of the fiscal deficit and public debt under former president Macky Sall’s administration helped shine the spotlight on the levels of corruption Faye’s administration inherited.
Sall’s government had also come under fire for underhandedly issuing industrial fishing licenses to foreign companies at the expense of local and small-scale fishers which undermined the livelihoods of thousands of Senegalese people and their dependents.
Moreover, Senegal recently became an oil producer after oil production began in June. President Faye has committed to managing the oil resources equitably and also promised to review the contracts of the oil companies that were approved under the previous administration.
However, the relationship between the legislature, still dominated by parties aligned with former president Macky Sall, and the executive has been fraught with so much tension as to render any cooperation almost impossible and Faye’s agenda was effectively vetoed.
Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, a key ally of President Faye, refused to present the government’s policy statement before the National Assembly in July citing problematic internal parliamentary regulations which he insisted the parliament should first address. The legislature also refused to receive the Minister of Finance and Budget, Cheikh Diba, who was supposed to lead the debate on budget orientation.
Moreover, the opposition-controlled parliament also rejected the president’s constitutional amendment proposals in August which would have abolished two statutory bodies: the High Council of Territorial Collectivities (HCTC) and the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (ESEC).
The president and his party argued that scrapping the two bodies which gobble up a combined budget of US$24 million would help free up government resources for other developmental pursuits and help put a cap on public expenditure. However, the parliament argued that the two institutions served a special democratic role suggesting that their abolition was unjustified.
The legislature also asked the president to start by scrapping special funds dedicated to the President’s office contending that these funds drained the fiscus and were not transparently managed. However, the parliament’s rejection of the president’s proposals was perhaps a foregone conclusion considering that many of the people serving in the two institutions were appointed by the former ruling party which now controlled parliament.
In a further sign of perhaps an irreparable breakdown of the relations between the executive and the legislature, the latter tabled a motion of no confidence in the government of Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko.
This proved to be the last straw as a few days later on September 12 President Faye announced the dissolution of parliament arguing that the institution “has chosen to go against the will of the Senegalese people, by rejecting the constitutional amendment aimed at fulfilling my promise to abolish the HCCT and the CESE”. This paved the way for the just concluded parliamentary elections.
Having secured an overwhelming parliamentary majority, the Pastef will allow President Faye and his administration to push through his reform agenda without resistance and with an even bigger mandate. This sets the stage for potential far-reaching political and economic reforms in one of West Africa’s most stable democracies.
It is almost certain that Faye’s proposal to scrap the HCCT and CESE will be sent back to a more pliant Parliament as soon as it re-sits. The President’s broader constitutional reform agenda now stands a reasonable chance of sailing through. These include the replacement of the Constitutional Council, the highest court in the country, with a more empowered and bigger Constitutional Court.
This, they have argued, would improve both the effectiveness and the legitimacy of the apex court. Another key reform proposed by President Faye and his party is the reconfiguration of the balance of power between the President and the Prime Minister.
The post of Prime Minister has undergone a tumultuous period recently with former president Sall abolishing it in 2019 only to recreate it in 2022. The legal and official relationship between the Prime Minister and the President will be critical to the stability of the Faye administration.
This is not least because Prime Minister Sonko’s support was the single biggest factor in Faye’s electoral victory in March. Further, the new parliamentary majority gives President Faye the confidence to go ahead with his anti-corruption campaign and economic reforms which include stabilizing the macro-economic environment to attract investment and curtail inflation, reducing the size of government to control expenditure, and renegotiating contracts with foreign investors in the natural resources sector.
* Dr. Sizo Nkala is a Research Fellow at the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for Africa-China Studies.
** The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of The African.
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