Achi news desk-
Dakar, (APP – UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News – 28 March, 2024) Anti-establishment figure Bassirou Diomaye Faye has comfortably won Senegal’s presidential election with 54.28 percent of votes in the first round, official provisional results showed on Wednesday.
He placed well ahead of the ruling coalition candidate, former prime minister Amadou Ba, who garnered 35.79 percent.
The victory for Faye, who was released from prison just 10 days before the election, still has to be validated by Senegal’s main constitutional body, which could happen in a few days.
Faye, 44, who has said he wants a “break” with the current political system, is set to become the youngest president in Senegal’s history.
This would be the first time since independence from France in 1960 that an opponent won in the first round.
The candidate in third place, Aliou Mamadou Dia, won only 2.8 percent of the vote, according to figures read in the Dakar court by the president of the national vote counting commission, Amady Diouf.
Although his victory in Sunday’s vote was already clear after the announcement of partial unofficial results, Faye’s margin of victory was confirmed by the vote counting commission, which comes under the judiciary.
The turnout of 61.30 percent was less than in 2019 when President Macky Sall won a second term in the first round, but more than in 2012.
The announcement of the official provisional results appears to clear the way for a transfer of power between outgoing President Macky Sall and his successor.
The political crisis sparked by Sall’s last-minute postponement of the vote, and the rushed electoral timetable that followed, cast doubt on whether the transfer could take place before the incumbent’s term officially ends on April 2.
But a quick transition now appears feasible in the West African nation, which prides itself on its stability and democratic principles in a coup-hit region, provided no appeals are made.
Presidential candidates have 72 hours after the results are announced by the commission to submit an appeal to the Constitutional Council.
The Constitution states that if no appeals are made in this period, “the Council will immediately announce the final results of the vote”.
But if an objection is made, the Council has five days to rule and could, in principle, annul the election.
