By Zane Irwin, DAKAR
Senegal
Senegal’s government Monday dissolved a major opposition party hours after the party’s popular president and opposition leader said a judge ordered his arrest.
Ousmane Sonko (pictured above), a towering
opposition figure widely supported by Senegal’s youth, was in prison Monday as
he awaited trial for new criminal charges, said his party’s communications
director, El Malick Ndiaye. It is unclear when the trial will take place. He is
accused of calling for insurrection, conspiring against the state, threatening
national security and other charges.
“I’ve just been unjustly
placed under a committal order,” Sonko wrote on his Facebook page Monday, which
communications director Ndiaye confirmed.
Earlier on Monday, Senegal’s
interior minister issued a statement claiming Sonko’s opposition party had been
dissolved. The Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity (PASTEF)
party has “frequently called on its supporters to take part in insurrectionary
movements,” Antoine Félix Diome, Senegal’s interior minister, alleged in a
statement.
Diome blamed the opposition party’s
leaders for causing loss of life and the looting of properties during protests in June against the prosecution of opposition
leader Ousmane Sonko, who is seen as a key challenger in the election.
The
opposition party’s dissolution was criticized by former Prime Minister Aminata
Touré as an “unprecedented setback” in the West African nation’s democratic
history. It further raised concerns about next year’s presidential election in
Senegal, long considered a bastion of democracy and a regional leader in
diplomacy.
“In his despotic determination
to hold on to power in Senegal, albeit by proxy, Macky Sall has just opened the
floodgates to chaos by imprisoning, on spurious grounds, his main opponent
Ousmane Sonko,” said a PASTEF communiqué Monday, after Diome’s claimed to have
disbanded the party.
“Even if they dissolve PASTEF,
they can’t dissolve its spirit,” Ndiaye said.
The Senegalese government,
meanwhile, restricted mobile internet services on Monday, a measure taken “due
to the dissemination of hateful and subversive messages on social networks,”
according to Moussa Bocar Thiam, the communications minister.President Macky Sall
Residents throughout the
country reported they were not able to access the internet.
Sonko said a local judge in
the capital Dakar ordered him held temporarily following fresh charges against him Saturday, including
conspiracy against the state and calls for insurrection. The charges are
different from an earlier one of corrupting youth. That led to Sonko’s
conviction in June, which ignited deadly protests across the nation with 23
people killed.
Sonko is popular among
Senegal’s youth and has been seen as a threat to the ruling party ahead of the
2024 election. His supporters have said the charges are to prevent him from
running again for president after he placed third in the 2019 race.
From his cell in Sebikotane
prison, just outside the capital Dakar, Sonko can run for president in the 2024
election, communications director Ndiaye said, a claim our reporter could not
immediately verify.
“If the Senegalese people, for
whom I have always fought, abdicate and decide to leave me in the hands of
(President) Macky Sall’s regime, I will, as always, submit to God’s will,”
Sonko wrote on his Facebook page.
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