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Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade (left) reaches out toward the arms of supporters passing in a public transit bus as he tours downtrodden suburban areas on the outskirts of Dakar, Senegal, Wednesday. (AP-Yonhap News) |
DAKAR (AFP) ― Senegal votes Sunday in a cliffhanger poll to determine whether 85-year-old President Abdoulaye Wade secures a contentious third term in a bid that has rattled the stability of the west African state.
Having failed to deliver a crushing first-round victory a month ago, Wade faces a stiff challenge from his former prime minister Macky Sall, who has gathered the full weight of the opposition behind his presidential bid.
While laden with suspense, this latest pre-election period was calm compared to the first round, which had been preceded by a month of riots over Wade’s candidacy that left six dead and over 150 injured.
The octogenarian’s efforts to seek re-election by circumventing a two-term constitutional limit earned him stiff rebukes from abroad, and raised fears for the stability of one of Africa’s oldest democracies.
Wade polled 34.8 percent in the first round and said he failed to win outright because “the West was campaigning against me.”
The odds are in Sall’s favor heading into the election, with all the runners-up spread throughout the country to campaign for him, including superstar-turned-politician Youssou Ndour.
The opposition obtained a total 65 percent of the vote in the first round, but turnout was low and it is not clear whether voters will follow their respective leaders in backing Sall against the incumbent.
While Sall won the backing of the opposition, Wade scored the official support of a leading member of the country’s most powerful Islamic brotherhood, the Mourides, seen as key in the majority Muslim nation.
Wade, an intelligent and crafty political survivor who was in opposition for 25 years before his Senegalese Democratic Party unseated the Socialist Party in 2000 elections, has remained defiant in the storm of criticism.
“There is only one hypothesis. I win. The possibility of my defeat is absurd,” he told local television station Africa7 Wednesday.
“It is as if I say the sky is going to fall on our heads in one minute. It is absurd because the sky is not going to fall on our heads.”
A Wade victory will stoke fears of violence after his mere presence in the race prompted opposition supporters to take to the streets.
Despite having served two terms in office, a limit he himself introduced, Wade says later changes to the constitution allow him to serve two more successive mandates.
Officially the second oldest African leader after Zimbabwe’s 88-year-old Robert Mugabe, some claim Wade is in fact pushing 90 due to discrepancies in the way birth certificates were filed at the time he was born in a nation where the median age is now 18.
In 2007, he won elections in the first round with 55 percent, but his popularity has plunged in recent years amid rising food prices and power cuts which crippled economic activity last year but disappeared in time for the election campaign.
While Wade receives kudos for an aggressive infrastructure drive, critics say he has focused on fanciful legacy projects ― which he calls the “Seven Wonders” ― to the detriment of good governance initiatives.
His piece de resistance is the African Renaissance Monument, a North Korean-built bronze behemoth that cost 15 million euros ($20 million), offending those living in its shadow, battling poverty and power cuts.
Aside from a new airport and a tolled highway, both still incomplete, Wade has a long list of projects to finish.
He envisions art and architecture schools and has planned an entire new capital city as well as new administrative district to be built on the site of the old airport.
Wade has said he wants only a few more years to finish his “grand projects” but is seen as stalling so he can line up his unpopular son Karim to succeed him.
Despite its stability, Senegal ― a nation of some 13 million whose main earners are fishing, tourism and groundnut production ― has a large proportion of people living below the poverty threshold.
