DAKAR: Senegal’s top court on Friday upheld the holding of a deferred presidential election on March 24, rejecting an attempt by disqualified candidates to cancel the date.
The rejected candidates and allied lawmakers had called for presidential decrees temporarily suspending the date of the vote and the campaign’s duration.
If the Supreme Court had accepted the requests, the electoral process would have been called into question at the last minute.
The court said the issue did not fall within its purview, adding that the Constitutional Council had “full jurisdiction in electoral matters.”
President Macky Sall postponed the February election and tried to push it back to December at the last minute, sparking a crisis and deadly protests.
He was then forced to reset the date to March 24.
“This election is the most important we’ve ever had. Many people have died, life has become more expensive, and the Senegalese are tired. We need a new system,” said Hamza Soumboundou, a first-year applied arts student at Gaston Berger University in the northern city of Saint-Louis.
The 20-year-old wants the next president to create jobs, fight corruption and injustice, develop agriculture, and cancel foreign fishing agreements.
He also hopes for the re-establishment of the rule of law, which he says was flouted under outgoing President Sall.
UGB is the second largest in the country and was badly hit by the political crisis triggered by the delay to the February 25 presidential poll.
Two students were killed and several others injured in protests that left a total of four people dead across the country.
UGB has experienced less unrest than Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, but protests there are known to descend into violence.
Clashes over grant payments in 2018 left one student dead.
