Once docile, Senegal remains on the tipping end as it prepares itself for a presidential run-off this March. It is not an admirable stance as the wrong foot forward can send it crashing and putting all Senegalese at risk.
The first round of the election has left a controversial trail and the next best question is: Would the cluster of political parties be in a decisive position to puncture President Abdoulaye Wade’s chances for a disputed third time coming?
Whether the voters would join the opposition to tell Mr. Wade, ”go, man go!” is not so strong as when the cries started but it would be an error for them to think that it is a rallying call to chase the president out of office.
Now, it is up to the opposition to decide which way to head. Many said they had created the mess in the first place by overcrowding the presidential race with over 12 candidates when they could have done well with one individual and not dividing the votes.
By being so many, they have not only confused the voters on whose dinner they had wanted to feast on, but have exhibited their political greed, Senegalese analysts recalled.
They argued that the opposition leaders converted the presidential stage exposing their desire to come to power through their individual sails.
As one Senegalese voter observed: “it’s like going against the wind”- a brave act against nature itself.
The overriding question remains: What are Mr. Wade’s chances of a comeback or would it shift to the end of his political life? Along Senegalese traditional thinking, all depends on whether the opposition parties would maintain solidarity by voting en masse for the majority candidate that will emerge.
It is a tricky dick situation as whether any doubts of integrity being ruptured, a money compromise of promise of high state job, can be the medicinal dose to return to political business as usual.
At the stage which the first round has reached, Mr. Wade and his roaming band of diehard campaign smarters will not be going to bed early these days.
The Wade group has the cash and other opportunities to dangle the choicest meat to the weakest part of the opposition chain and it could snap to the direction of the bidder.
A day is a long time in one’s political life and nothing should be ruled out in the dash to State House.
An African situation without accusations and counter-accusations are unheard of so the Senegalese election is no exception. What is needed is to keep tempers down and seek ways of stopping the loss of lives, which had claimed so far about ten people.
Voters basing their doubts on past experiences in electoral polls wonder whether the opposition would stick to their guns to scrub off Mr. Wade for all times from the electoral mat. They, like a Special Court for Sierra Leone bureaucrat would say, “Bear the greatest responsibility” of what is happening to Senegal because they had stayed so long in the game, bolstering Mr. Wade and fixing his agenda along periods of operating from the same party.
As one angry commentator recalled, ”the opposition should have short-circuited the process long ago, but they kept on bellydancing with Mr. Wade.”One boast that has been taken off the Wade campaign is that the first round would be a walk through. It had not happened so, the follow up round edges towards easy picking.
Wade’s campaign spokesman, Amadou Sall still keeping a confident public face despite the low circuit shock said: “if the Senegalese people decide that President Wade will win in the first round, then the president will win in the first round. But if the Senegalese people decide that we have a second round, we will have a second round.”
In any case, the immense powers of the country’s Constitutional Court, a powerful legal entity in all French-speaking countries, would again be tested for its worth.
It was the court which gave Mr. Wade a clean presidential contesting bill amidst cries from the opposition parties that he had already squandered his legitimacy to be part of the process.
The election itself has not been without its woes. Markets were disrupted; burning tyres littered the main streets, vehicular traffic halted. Also much reading could be made out from the initial returns in the 58 percent voters’ turnout with Mr. Wade having 31 percent and former Prime Minister Macy Sall’s Alliance for the Republic trailing with 25 percent and Moustapha Niasse of the Alliance of Progressive Forces, third with 17 percent.
But in the coming days, the dust will be cleared.
By Rod Mac-Johnson
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