DAKAR (Reuters) – Senegal’s opposition said yesterday it would make the country “ungovernable” if President Abdoulaye Wade insisted on running for a third term in elections next month, raising the spectre of renewed riots in West Africa’s most peaceful nation.
One policeman was killed during protests late on Friday, in which demonstrators threw rocks, overturned cars and burned tyres and security forces fired tear gas, after the country’s top court said Wade had the right to seek a new term.
Calm returned to the capital Dakar yesterday but security was boosted around the presidential palace, where truckloads of police in full riot gear were deployed, armed with tear gas grenade launchers and truncheons.
“Abdoulaye Wade has declared war on the people,” Amath Dansakho, the head of the PIT party and member of the M23 opposition activist group, told reporters following a meeting with other political and civil society leaders.
“The decision that we have just made will prove to Wade that this is a country of free people. We will render the country ungovernable,” he said. Friday’s clashes came after Senegal’s top legal body validated the candidacy of 85-year-old Wade and 13 rivals for the Feb. 26 vote, but turned down the presidential bid of world music star Youssou N’Dour, saying he did not have the required 10,000 signatures of support.
Wade’s rivals say the constitution sets an upper limit of two terms on the president. But Wade, who came to power in 2000 and was re-elected in 2007, has argued his first term pre-dated the 2001 amendment establishing the limit. M23 said in a press release yesterday the court’s decision was a “constitutional coup, and a prelude to what will be an electoral coup” and called on Senegalese across the country to resist Wade’s re-election bid.
