Senegal needs to 'be really peaceful, maintain these candidates, go to elections and move forward'
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Transcript
00:00 Let's go to the Senegalese capital, Dakar.
00:02 Cheikh Oumar Sy is a former member of parliament, former special advisor to the current Prime
00:07 Minister Amadou Ba.
00:09 Thank you for speaking with us here on France 24.
00:13 Thank you very much, very much for inviting me.
00:17 The question on everybody's lips who I've spoken to from Senegal is when's the presidential
00:22 election?
00:23 What are your thoughts on that?
00:26 That's a key question for that everybody's asking right now.
00:30 Then since we started the dialogue yesterday, the president has set up two commission.
00:34 One of the main commission is working on the dates.
00:38 Several dates have been proposed by different parties.
00:42 But most of the people agree that the election should be held before June.
00:49 Before the month of June.
00:50 Now his term expires on April the 2nd.
00:54 Who's in charge after that?
00:58 That's also a big question that the president has proposed to the people who are attending
01:03 the dialogue to see how they can work out the issue because the constitutions right
01:09 now say that the president of the National Assembly can take over only when the president
01:17 is deceased or he's no longer in power, he decided to quit, or we have a vacancy.
01:24 We don't have these three cases.
01:25 So the proposal on the table that most of the people are discussing right now and to
01:31 see how we can maintain the president until the next president is elected because we don't
01:37 want to have instability.
01:39 We need to also keep in mind that Senegal needs to be stable.
01:45 That the discussion right now is moving forward to see if the president can be here until
01:53 the next president is in power.
01:55 But you have a constitution and it's got provisions in it.
01:58 What is it, the speaker of parliament who takes over if there's a vacuum of power?
02:05 Exactly.
02:07 That's what the constitution said.
02:09 But the president actually, the constitution said exactly that the president needs to quit,
02:13 decide to quit the power before his terms or his deceit or there is a vacancy on the
02:18 power.
02:19 We don't have, none of them is actually allowing us to take that, the speaker of the parliament
02:29 to take over.
02:30 So what we're having is a new case for us to study is the president is here, we have
02:36 a situation and we need somebody to keep the country stable.
02:43 And the people are attending right now the dialogue, are moving forward to see if the
02:47 president actually can stay in power until the next president is elected.
02:52 17 out of 19 presidential candidates boycotting this two day national dialogue.
02:59 They say that they see this exercise as a stalling tactic.
03:02 That when the constitutional council at the start of the month said that Macky Sall had
03:06 to step down, that at that point he should have just given a date for the presidential
03:11 election.
03:12 Why didn't he do so?
03:14 I think that was a concern for everybody that the president can stay over his mandate, but
03:25 we saw that on the 2nd of April he should leave power.
03:29 And exactly the 16 people who decided to boycott the dialogue has made the case that we need
03:37 right now to host the election so we can elect our new president.
03:41 I don't know exactly why he decided to do so.
03:44 One of the main reasons that I've talked about before is that there is suspicion when it
03:52 comes to how the people have been chosen to run for the presidential.
03:58 And two of the judges have been really looked forward by the assembly that they have been
04:05 corrupt.
04:07 No proof yet on the table, no proof against anything that shows that there is a corruption
04:12 on the table.
04:13 But as you were saying, it caught everyone by surprise when the president decided at
04:19 first to try and stay on until the end of the year.
04:23 The prime minister, who's running, doesn't all of this undermine his chances?
04:28 Doesn't it make it much, much more difficult for Amadou Barguet to get elected?
04:33 I don't think that he's going to undermine his chances, because what he showed is that
04:38 he's aligned with what the president is showing, truly.
04:42 But he showed yesterday also that he's ready to go for the election to run, and he's prepared
04:47 for that.
04:48 So only the people, the voters, will decide exactly who's going to be on the power.
04:53 So what we need to find out right now-
04:56 Well, actually, no, the Constitutional Council said it has to be the same candidates that
05:00 were already validated.
05:02 Yes, that's the main discussion also on the dialogue.
05:07 Some want the same candidate to be maintained, and some others, like the former party in
05:14 power, PDS, want the process to be removed, and then we have a new process again.
05:24 And I think that's not a good idea.
05:25 What we need is right now for the Senegal to be really peaceful.
05:29 What we need is to maintain this candidate, to go to the election, and then we can move
05:33 forward with other issues.
05:35 We're out of time.
05:36 What is the nearest possible date that you see?
05:41 People are discussing the nearest date on May 18th.
05:45 May 18th.
05:46 OK.
05:47 Cheikh Oumar Sy, many thanks for joining us live from Dakar.
05:51 Thank you very much.
05:52 Stay with us.
05:53 There's more to come.
05:54 More news, plus the day's business and sports.
05:55 You're watching France 24.
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