In February, the West African country appeared to be on the cusp of chaos as its president tried to seize power for himself. How Senegal became one of 2024’s biggest democratic success stories.
By Alexander Noyes and Louison Sall
December 2024
On November 17, Senegal’s ruling party won 130 out of 165 parliamentary seats, a 78 percent majority. This is an impressive victory for President Bassirou Diomaye Faye’s party and a resounding repeat defeat for former president Macky Sall, whose party only secured 16 seats. The victory provides Faye and his African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity (PASTEF) party with a mandate to implement their agenda, a stunning turnaround of their political fortunes and a remarkable democratic recovery for Senegal.
Last February, Faye was in prison when then-President Sall launched an unsuccessful effort to stay in power beyond his legal mandate, what scholars call a self-coup or executive coup. Analysts at the time warned that the country’s longtime democracy was on its deathbed. The very next month, Faye was elected president and the country was being hailed as a democratic success story.
What explains Senegal’s ability to reject Sall’s power grab and rebound democratically? How can Senegal’s democratic success story, all too rare in a region plagued by coups and democratic decay, be replicated in other at-risk countries in the region and beyond? Brave protesters and voters, an independent judiciary and military, as well as united outside pressure were all critical in Senegal.
Increasing Executive Power Grabs
Self-coups are on the rise globally, with recent examples in Brazil and Tunisia. Scholars include self-coups in the broader concept of democratic backsliding. In 2016, Nancy Bermeo wrote that executive coups “involve a freely elected chief executive suspending the constitution outright in order to amass power in one swift sweep.” She highlighted Peru’s President Alberto Fujimori’s self-coup in 1992 — when he illegally dissolved the legislature and suspended the constitution — as a dramatic example of an executive coup that rapidly led to democratic breakdown and dictatorship.
There is rich scholarly research on democratic backsliding, as well as an emerging focus on “incumbent takeovers,” but less attention has been paid to the causes and consequences of self-coups. The concept of incumbent takeovers encompasses both sudden, clearly illegal, self-coups, as well as more gradual forms of democratic breakdown, which are often cloaked in legal or quasi-legal facades. Kenny Miao and Jason Brownlee refer to the latter form of democratic backsliding as “death by a thousand cuts.” Executive coups are more akin to death by a single cut.
Coup, Interrupted
How did Senegal avoid death by a single cut? The February 2024 Senegalese presidential election was shaping up to be a close and competitive race between opposition leader Ousmane Sonko, the founder of PASTEF, and Sall’s handpicked successor, Amadou Ba. But Sall engaged in increasingly repressive behavior in the run-up to the vote, culminating in his self-coup attempt on February 3, which took place hours before election campaigning was set to start.
In February 2023, Sonko was detained during protests related to his defamation trial, which his supporters saw as politically motivated. In June 2023, he was sentenced to two years for immoral behavior in “corrupting the youth.” When Sonko was named the PASTEF candidate in July 2023, the Sall government responded by dissolving the entire party. The Constitutional Council ultimately decided to disqualify Sonko from the upcoming election due to his legal issues.
PASTEF then designated its secretary-general at the time, Faye, as their candidate. Faye himself had been detained since April 2023, when he was arrested for criticizing the judicial process of Sonko’s defamation trial on social media. But he was confirmed to be an eligible candidate by the Constitutional Council since his trial was still only pending. In January 2024, the final candidate list included Sall’s pick, Ba, and Faye, whom Sonko endorsed.
Amid all this preelection lawfare and undemocratic maneuvering, Sall dramatically escalated the situation by postponing the election indefinitely on February 3, blaming concerns about judicial integrity and dual citizenship among the opposing candidates. The government subsequently shut off the internet, delaying media coverage, and the National Assembly voted two days later to delay the election until December, thereby extending Sall’s rule well beyond his constitutional mandate, which was set to expire in early April.
During the parliamentary vote, police and gendarmerie forcibly removed opposition deputies from parliament buildings and suppressed protesters with gunfire and tear gas outside the building. Ultimately, three people were killed in the days following Sall’s postponement. Yet the military largely stayed out of the fray, remaining apolitical during the constitutional crisis.
Sall’s brazenly undemocratic actions in the run-up to the poll ultimately backfired, serving to galvanize the opposition and outside actors. Civil society groups, including the Aar Sunu Election collective, as well as opposition parties, led domestic pushback. A broad range of regional and international actors also condemned Sall’s move, including the African Union, the European Union, France, and the United States. U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken called Sall on February 14 to voice “serious concerns.”
This combination of domestic and outside forces put immense pressure on Sall to reverse course. On February 15, the Constitutional Council showed impressive independence and ruled that the postponement was unconstitutional. A new election date was set for March 24, and on March 14 both Sonko and Faye were released following the passage of an amnesty bill. After brief campaigning, Faye was elected on March 24 and officially inaugurated as president on April 2, marking a dramatic end to the crisis.
What’s Next?
Six months after Faye took office, he dissolved parliament and called for snap elections. Faye said working with parliament had become impossible after members of parliament refused to start discussions on budget laws and rejected efforts to dissolve wasteful state institutions.
Faye’s now overwhelming parliamentary majority grants him the ability to fully execute the reforms he campaigned on, with a heavy focus on addressing corruption. Faye has plans to renegotiate contracts on oil, gas, mining, and fishing in an effort to have benefits more directly and equitably shared among the population. He also plans to replace the CFA franc with a national currency, include indigenous languages in schools, launch his “Senegal 2050” plan for economic growth and poverty reduction, as well as move forward with constitutional and political reforms. Only time will tell if he’s able to fully implement this ambitious agenda, but it’s hard to imagine more propitious political conditions for him and his newly empowered party.
Senegal’s remarkable turnaround offers three main lessons for democracy supporters who are interested in helping to slow the rise of self-coups. First, a strong civil society and population willing to take to the streets are critical to pressuring aspiring dictators to reverse course. Perhaps more important, the people hold the ultimate power to punish presidential putschists at the ballot box by voting them and their enablers out. Second, robust and independent democratic institutions, especially the military and judiciary, are also key to stopping incumbents bent on staying in office. Finally, coordinated regional and international pressure can help tip the balance.
To help other countries inoculate themselves to executive coups, regional and international democracy supporters would be wise to ramp up democracy and governance support to emerging democracies in Africa and beyond. They should focus especially on support to civil society groups and programs that aim to build the strength of the judiciary and an apolitical military. When self-coups do take place, outside actors should swiftly use all their available tools to apply coordinated pressure on wannabe autocrats.
Over the past year, Senegal has resoundingly chosen self-rule over self-coup. It’s up to democratically minded citizens, as well as regional and international democracy promoters, to learn and apply these hard-fought lessons more broadly.
Alexander Noyes is a fellow in the Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology at the Brookings Institution. Louison Sall is a research assistant at Brookings.
Copyright © 2024 National Endowment for Democracy
Image credit: Cem Ozdel/Anadolu via Getty Images
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