00:00A show of support for Senegal's ousted Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko overnight
00:04as hundreds of people gathered outside his home in Dakar.
00:09After months of tensions, President Basirou Diomay-Fai on Friday
00:14dissolved the government and sacked Sonko, his one-time mentor.
00:19But relations between the two have soured in recent months
00:22with public disagreements over coalition leadership.
00:25No surprise, because we were expecting it. We didn't expect it to happen today.
00:31Now that it has happened, we've been given the chance to operate in the arena we know best,
00:37namely the opposition's arena.
00:39Now we'll have time to play politics and talk to the Senegalese people
00:43and let Diomay continue his term.
00:47And we'll wait until 2029 to elect our president, who will be Ousmane Sonko.
00:54Sonko has a passionate following, but was barred from running for president in 2024.
01:00He instead backed Fai, who then appointed him Prime Minister.
01:06It didn't surprise me because I would have liked it to happen a long time ago rather than today.
01:12I would have liked that dismissal to have taken place a very long time ago.
01:18Because in fact, President Ousmane Sonko, his way of doing things, his way of seeing things,
01:24his way of operating, there are many people today who were in the previous government
01:29who didn't understand him.
01:31As a result, we didn't want him to resign of his own accord.
01:37Recent parliamentary changes to electoral eligibility rules
01:40will allow Sonko to run for the top job in 2029.
01:45But for now, as the sitting president just showed,
01:49Fai holds all the power.
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