SENEGAL’S main opposition alliance yesterday announced it would not appeal against the July 31 legislative election results.

The final figures must be published by the Constitutional Council, Senegal’s highest court, no later than today.  

Provisional results, published on August 4, saw the presidential coalition lose an absolute majority, a first in history for the West African country.

President Macky Sall’s coalition, which includes his party Alliance for the Republic and other parties, won 82 seats of the National Assembly’s 165, the national vote-counting commission said, down from the 125 it won in 2017.

The opposition alliance won 80 seats in total, with 56 for “Yewwi Askan Wi” (which means “Liberate the People” in Wolof) – a coalition led by the main opponent Ousmane Sonko – and 24 for the “Wallu Senegal” (“Save Senegal”) coalition, led by former president Abdoulaye Wade.

Three other lawmakers come from the ranks of three other small party coalitions.

“The Yewwi-Wallu inter-coalition will not appeal to the Constitutional Council,” said Dethie Fall, one of its leaders, at a news conference yesterday, without specifying whether he accepted or contested the results.

Yewwi Askan Wi had complained on August 4 about the vote-counting commission “refusing” to let it “verify” the voting records in four localities in the north of the country, a stronghold of President Sall.

Fall also announced that the alliance will boycott the elections of members of the High Council of Territorial Communities, an advisory institution comprising 150 members, 70 of whom are appointed by the president and 80 of whom are indirectly elected by local elected officials for five years.

That vote, scheduled for September 4, has aroused little interest domestically.

Several officials have called for the abolition of the institution. – AFP, August 11, 2022.