DAKAR: The ruling coalition of Senegal’s President Macky Sall won a widely expected landslide in a legislative election, his prime minister said on Monday, bolstering Sall’s prospects for re-election in 2019.
The Benno Bokk Yakaar (BBY) coalition swept all except three of the country’s 45 electoral departments, said Prime Minister Mahammed Boun Abdallah Dionne.
The ruling coalition “emerged victorious” following the vote on Sunday, Dionne said, while the turnout was 54 percent among Senegal’s 6.2 million registered voters.
Dionne said opposition coalition lists were likely to be ahead in the departments of Kedougou, Saraya and possibly Mbacke, but otherwise the BBY list of candidates “had been voted in by the Senegalese people.”
The official results are expected later this week. Some complained of being left off the electoral rolls on Sunday, and there were delays to voting in several places, partly due to bad weather.
Sall’s main threat to increasing his power in Parliament was posed by ex-leader Abdoulaye Wade, 91, who was aiming to drum up support for his own list of candidates and his son, Karim, who is not on the ballot but has ambitions for the presidency.
His other serious opponent, Dakar Mayor Khalifa Sall (no relation), is in jail awaiting trial for what supporters say are politically motivated embezzlement charges, and headed a list while campaigning from his jail cell.
The mayor had been seen as a key contender for 2019 and a potential threat to the president in parliament until he was charged in March with allegedly misappropriating 1.83 billion CFA francs ($2.85 million) in city funds.
There were 47 lists of candidates contesting the election, with 165 lawmakers due to take seats in Parliament.
Senegal ruling party coalition claims election landslide
Senegal ruling party coalition claims election landslide
Russia says the West should stop claiming Moscow and Beijing threaten Greenland
- “First they came up with the idea that there were some aggressors,” Zakharova said
- “We stand in solidarity with China’s position”
MOSCOW: Russia said on Thursday that its was unacceptable for the West to keep claiming that Russia and China threatened Greenland, and said the crisis over the territory showed the inconsistency of the West’s implementation of the so-called “rules-based” order.
“First they came up with the idea that there were some aggressors, and then that they were ready to protect someone from these aggressors,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said of the West’s actions on Greenland.
The current situation, she said, “demonstrates with particular acuteness the inconsistency of the so-called ‘rules-based world order’ being built by the West,” Zakharova said.
“We stand in solidarity with China’s position on the unacceptability of references to certain activity of Russia and China around Greenland as a reason for the current escalation,” Zakharova said.
