Senegal candidates, civil society reject president's dialogue bid

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00:00 Senegal's president says he'll be leaving office as planned at the end of his term in April.

00:06 The clarification from Macky Sall comes weeks after he announced the presidential vote schedule

00:10 for this month would be delayed. A date for the next election has yet to be set and it's unclear

00:16 who will be taking over once the president's term runs out. We can now go across to France 24, Sam

00:22 Bradpee standing by in Dakar for us. Sam, good afternoon. What is the opposition, where you have

00:27 been saying? Well, the opposition have largely denounced Macky Sall's plan to hold a national

00:33 dialogue, a step which the president says is absolutely necessary before a new election date

00:39 can be unveiled. And many of the opposition candidates who were supposed to be running

00:45 in the presidential election this Sunday have said they would refuse to participate.

00:52 They accused the president of essentially using the national dialogue as a way to buy more time

00:56 in office and their demand is that a new election date is fixed as soon as possible. As I already

01:03 mentioned, this election was supposed to have been held this Sunday, but Macky Sall delayed the vote

01:09 citing accusations levelled at the Constitutional Council, accusations that many Senegalese people

01:15 greeted with kind of incredulity, really. They just see it as a ploy for the president to remain

01:21 in office. So we remain to see kind of what will happen as far as this national dialogue is

01:27 concerned. The will of many people here in Senegal is simply to have that election held as soon as

01:33 possible, especially before the end of the president's official mandate on April the 2nd.

01:39 And what happens if Macky Sall does step down on the 2nd of April and there are no

01:46 elections scheduled between now and then? What happens? Well, this is one of the kind of big

01:53 questions which is hanging over this whole political saga. Macky Sall said in his address

01:59 to the nation on Thursday evening that he would not remain in office after April the 2nd, the

02:04 official end of his term date. But exactly who replaces him should there not be elections by

02:11 then is still really unclear and it's likely to be one of the things discussed during this

02:17 national dialogue which is set to be held early next week. But again the caveat is that there

02:26 simply can't be any consensus if this national dialogue is boycotted. So we're looking at what

02:34 seems to be somewhat of a stalemate at this point in time. It's unclear who will replace Macky Sall.

02:40 I'm sure the president will likely be hoping that it will be a close ally in the event that he does

02:46 step down.

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