Will Sall's vow to leave end unrest in Senegal?
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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 came just weeks after he announced the presidential vote
00:10 scheduled for this month would be delayed. A date for the next election has yet to be set
00:16 and it's unclear who will be taking over once the president's term runs out. We can now bring in
00:21 our international affairs editor, Philippe Terle. Philippe, great to see you as always. Talk us
00:27 through this interview which Macky Sall gave last night where he gave us details which we didn't know.
00:32 Right, well there are several takeaways from this interview. First of all, there was a huge
00:37 amount of pressure building on not only Macky Sall but on Senegal to sort this problem out,
00:43 not only within the country but from the international community. Senegal is seen as
00:46 one of the most stable democratic countries in West Africa so a lot of shock that this was all
00:54 falling apart at the seams since the beginning of February and no sign that the election is
00:57 taking place this Sunday were going to be held and even pushed back to this December. So this
01:03 interview has given some kind of reassurance I think in the fact that the main takeaway was that
01:10 Macky Sall has said that he is going to stand down on the 2nd of April which is the date that his
01:15 presidential term ends, that's 12 years to the day since he took office in 2012. What we don't know
01:22 though is that there's no date for a new poll yet, no idea about when that poll could be held,
01:27 it could be on the 2nd of April, it could be after that but no date's been set and the President
01:32 would not go as far and far enough forward to say that he had a date in mind and that was the day
01:38 that these elections would be held. The next point is that we don't know who's going to be acting
01:44 President if Macky Sall stands down on the 2nd of April and there's no one to take his place because
01:49 no election has been held. That is another mystery for the moment that hasn't been answered and the
01:54 last point is that there will be a two-day dialogue beginning on Monday in Senegal between
02:00 those who've been allowed to take part, 15 or so candidates for the presidential elections and
02:05 those who've been disqualified to try to work forward to work out together a day that the
02:10 election can take place. I think Macky Sall trying through this interview to reassure the candidates,
02:18 the public, the international community that things are going to get back to normal in Senegal
02:23 pretty quickly. But based on what he said is that enough to ensure that things go back to normal?
02:28 Well that is the big question and listening to what people have said since then it looks as though
02:34 there is still too much doubt, still too much fog as to what is really going to happen
02:39 in Senegal. Okay we know that Macky Sall is going to go on the 2nd of April, that was one of the key
02:43 demands because people were worried that the fact that the election is due to take place this Sunday
02:48 on the 25th of February were cancelled meant that Macky Sall was basically doing a power grab and
02:53 didn't want to hand over power to anybody else. So he said he's going to stand down on the 2nd
02:57 of April. If he goes what's going to happen next? Well it could be the constitutional court will
03:02 decide that it's the president of the national assembly who will step in and take over as
03:06 president until the elections are held. But that normally only happens if the president is
03:11 incapacitated but will come back afterwards to take back his job, not in the case of an absence
03:16 of a president whose mandate has ended. So that is also unclear and the other point which is
03:21 important to underline here is that the meetings taking place on Monday between the declared
03:28 candidates who've been accepted by the constitutional court and those who haven't been accepted like
03:32 Abdoulaye Wadd, the son of the former president, sorry Karim Wadd, the son of the former president
03:38 Abdoulaye Wadd and several others means that they don't have the same view. The candidates that have
03:46 been disqualified want the whole process to start all over again. The candidates that are qualified
03:52 want the election to go ahead as fast as possible. So it's very hard to see how they're going to
03:55 reach an agreement over a date when those elections can take place. So still a lot of
03:59 very unanswered questions in Senegal today Jolano and a lot more protests planned not only for this
04:05 weekend but also all the way through next week.