00:00 Moving on and to Senegal now and organisers have delayed a protest march that was to be held later
00:06 today after authorities banned it. It follows a controversial move to delay this month's
00:10 presidential poll in December and thus extend President Maki Sol's term. Opposition supporters
00:17 have been calling for a massive silent protest in the capital, Dakar. Joining me now from London is
00:23 Paul Melly, an Africa specialist at Chatham House. Paul, thank you very much for your time.
00:28 To begin with, why did President Sol decide to delay the election and how much support does
00:34 he actually have for such a move from the Senegalese public in general?
00:38 Well, his official reason for delaying the election was that the supporters in Parliament
00:45 of Karim Ouad, an opposition politician who did not successfully qualify for the election,
00:54 were protesting over the--they want an inquiry over the way that the constitutional court had
01:01 behaved in deciding that this candidate, Karim Ouad, could not run. But the real reason most
01:08 Senegalese believe why Maki Sol has delayed the election is because it was becoming increasingly
01:15 clear that his preferred successor, the government candidate in this election, the Prime Minister
01:21 Amadou Barre, was set for defeat. Amadou Barre is a highly capable technocrat, a former finance
01:28 minister and foreign minister before rising to the premiership, but he is not a charismatic
01:34 campaigner who's good at the sort of street side of politics of reaching out to the voters.
01:40 And after two Maki Sol terms and a lot of controversy in the last couple of years over
01:46 the government's handling of demonstrations and complaints about political pressures on
01:52 the judiciary, the momentum is with the opposition, and the Prime Minister looked set for defeat. So
01:58 many people think that's the real reason why Maki Sol decided to postpone the election,
02:05 to give himself space to see if he can find an alternative succession candidate. But this has
02:11 caused such a huge row because Senegal has deep rooted constitutional traditions. No one has
02:17 delayed an election before. Everything has always happened on time in the past. So which groups are
02:24 driving these protests, Paul? Well, basically a very wide range of the opposition, as well as
02:33 civil society. Senegal has a sort of vigorous civil society movement who've been involved over
02:39 the years in various campaigns over cost of living issues, as well as questions of civil rights.
02:44 But right at the heart of this are the key opposition movements, including that of Ousmane
02:52 Sanko, the charismatic anti-corruption campaigner, also a very, someone who has often resorted to a
03:00 very inflammatory language himself, but who is hugely popular among youth. And he's currently
03:06 in jail and he was excluded from the election because of a conviction for defaming a minister
03:16 in the government a few months ago, whom he accused of corruption, but then couldn't prove it.
03:20 And so his supporters, Senegalese youth in general, are very fired up. There's huge youthful
03:27 impatience, a big appetite for change. And people really feel very strongly about this.
03:35 It's not really about Macky Sall's record in government. He's managed the economy quite well.
03:40 He's created jobs. The economy is growing. Senegal has managed its debts carefully.
03:47 Big investment has gone into rural development to help the half of the population who still live in
03:54 villages in the countryside. So it's not really about that. But it's about his handling, if you
03:59 like, of government issue, governance issues, civil rights and political pressure on the courts.
04:07 That's what's angering people. Now, ECOWAS, the regional body,
04:12 has called on the government to restore the original election timetable and sent a delegation
04:17 to Mediate in the crisis. Is the government going to heed their call?
04:25 It's going to be very difficult. I think Senegal is usually seen as one of the most stable countries
04:31 in the region, a sort of pillar, if you like, of the political establishment in the ECOWAS bloc.
04:37 And because of its long record of democratic government, multi-party politics,
04:43 is normally one of the countries involved in crisis management rather than finding itself
04:50 the subject of a probe itself. So the Nigerian president, who was due to come to Senegal yesterday
04:58 as a sort of lead envoy for ECOWAS, he has postponed his visit. It's not quite clear
05:04 whether he will come. It may be that the signal from the Senegalese government is that
05:10 any possibility of progress or mediation is going to have to be something lower profile,
05:17 something that allows people to save face all around. The two currently surviving former
05:25 presidents of Senegal, both elderly gentlemen, Abdel Aywad and Abdel Diouf, they have both called
05:32 for calm, pacification. And it's possible that Senegal's powerful religious leaders, very
05:40 influential in Senegal, where religious brotherhoods, Sufi religious brotherhoods,
05:46 have the allegiance of a very large part of the population, they may play a big role in trying to
05:51 find some sort of calmer, negotiated outcome. But the clock is ticking, because
05:57 Macky Sall's official term was due to end on the 2nd of April. And many people dispute whether his
06:06 postponement of the election is actually constitutional. So if there isn't a resolution
06:11 in time, either for him to hand over on the 2nd of April, as originally planned, or for an agreed
06:18 sort of election prolongation, rather than the one forced through parliament by government supporters
06:25 to the end of the year, which many people don't accept, things could get very difficult over the
06:30 next few weeks. Paul Milley, I'm afraid we're going to have to leave it there. Thank you so much.
