Senegal’s president Macky Sall has won a second term with more than 58% of the national vote on Feb. 24, according to the country’s National Vote Counting Commission.
The polls were well-attended as more than 66% of 6.7 million registered voters took part on Sunday.
A run-off won’t be necessary with Sall’s majority win. Still, he faced some opposition with Idrissa Seck at 21%, and Ousmane Sonko at 16% of the vote. Seck and Sonko had 72 hours to contest the results, but now say they will not appeal.
However, Sall’s opponents Seck and Sonko weren’t his strongest candidates. Khalifa Sall, former mayor of Dakar, and Karim Wade, the son of former president Abdoulaye Wade, weren’t able to run.
Khalifa Sall, with no relation to president Sall, is currently serving a jail sentence for embezzlement, while Wade completed half of his sentence and is now living in exile in Qatar. The opposition says the two faced politically motivated trials and convictions, leading to Sall’s majority win on Sunday.
Over the four days of vote-counting, the electoral body called for all parties to not claim early victories after Sall did on Sunday. The opposition claims Sall used his presidency to tamper down any electoral challenge—also citing their rallies as larger support against Sall.
The results are provisional until the country’s constitutional council makes it official.
The president’s second term will be noticeably shorter by two years due to a 2016 referendum which ended the seven-year presidential term length. The change was a campaign promise by Sall when he ran for office in 2012.
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