Unfortunately, due to the unrest surrounding President Abdoulaye Wade’s controversial run for a third term, our spring clinic, slated for March 16th and 17th, is in jeopardy.
Miracle Ifeanyichukwu, Friends in Africa’s Senegalese director, says that he will make a final decision about the clinic after the February 26th elections are held. Though we will certainly make every effort to go ahead with our plans, we may have to postpone the clinic or change its location if the elections spark even more unrest. We’ve dealt with these situations in the past, and we know that we’ll be able to treat many patients--it’s just a matter of when...
Senegal Court Says President Can Run Again
Published: January 27, 2012
DAKAR, Senegal — Senegal’s elderly president can run for a third term next month, according to a ruling Friday night by the nation’s constitutional court, which also threw out the candidacy of the popular music star Youssou N’Dour, who vowed to appeal.
The decision, which appears to contradict a two-term limit in Senegal’s Constitution, quickly provoked street clashes, reminiscent of those last summer, between young opponents of the president, Abdoulaye Wade, and Senegal’s police.
Hundreds of Mr. Wade’s youthful opponents gathered downtown in the normally peaceful capital Friday night, some tossing rocks at the police, who responded with tear gas. Demonstrators also dragged wooden market tables into intersections and set them on fire, The Associated Press reported.
In Kaolack, a provincial capital, a mob torched the governing party’s headquarters, and in Thies, angry youths blocked the national highway, according to a private radio station.
“Stop these displays of petulance which will lead to nothing,” Mr. Wade, said on state television in an appeal for calm. “The electoral campaign will be open. There will be no restrictions on freedom,”
Mr. Wade, officially 85 but believed to be older, has become the focus of youthful discontent in a coastal nation of high unemployment and widespread poverty; in his 11 years in power, Senegal’s place on the United Nations Human Development Index — a measure of living standards, life expectancy, literacy and education — has hardly budged.
Yet Senegal had also maintained its reputation for vigilantly sticking to democratic rules, particularly compared with its turbulent West African neighbors, with a peaceful handoff of power in 2000, when Mr. Wade was first elected, and elections generally judged fair.
His critics say Mr. Wade has damaged that reputation with his determination to stay in power despite the constitutional limit, which he argued before the court — whose five judges he appointed — should not apply to him because he was elected before it took effect. Mr. Wade is to face three of his own former prime ministers, among other candidates, in the Feb. 26 election.
The constitutional court ruled that Mr. N’Dour, a top-selling singer popular worldwide and one of Mr. Wade’s leading critics, had not gathered the 10,000 valid signatures needed for a spot on the ballot, Reuters reported. It said authorities had been unable to identify around 4,000 of some 12,000 signatures in support of his candidacy.
Mr. N’Dour has been outspoken for several years in denouncing what he and others say are the president’s authoritarian tendencies. He has written songs decrying the failings of Mr. Wade’s rule, including frequent power failures, and has built a small media empire in Senegal that serves as a voice for the opposition.
“The fact that my candidacy was deemed unacceptable is a political matter. Mr. N’Dour said Friday night on the television station he owns, The A.P. reported. “Those in power are afraid of me.” He promised to draft an appeal of the court ruling on Saturday.
Mr. Wade, an accomplished lawyer who spent decades as an opposition leader himself, has a reputation for self-assurance. Earlier this week he airily dismissed his critics, as he often does,in an interview published on the Web site Dakaractu.com. “The constitution, it’s me that wrote it. All by myself,” he said. “Nobody knows it better than me.”
No comments:
Post a Comment