DAKAR, 3 Feb: Senegalese President Macky Sall on Saturday postponed presidential elections scheduled for Feb. 25, citing controversies over the disqualification of some candidates and allegations of corruption in election-related cases.
\nSall \u2014 who is not seeking another term in office \u2014 said he signed a decree repealing the law that convened the electoral body just as campaigning was set to begin in one of Africa\u2019s most stable democracies at a time the region is grappling with a wave of coups.
\nThe controversies over the candidates \u201ccould seriously harm the credibility of the election by creating the seeds of pre- and post-electoral litigation,\u201d Sall said without announcing a new date for the vote.
\nHe also said some of the 20 candidates cleared to run were discovered to have dual nationality, which would disqualify them under the Senegalese constitution.
\nThe announcement came as federal lawmakers were set to deliberate on a bill on the postponement as requested by the opposition Senegalese Democratic Party, whose candidate was disqualified from the election.
\nCritics of the postponement included former Prime Minister Aminata Tour\u00e9, who called it \u201csabotage.\u201d
\n\u201cFor a long time, they have sabotaged the process. This is the first time that a presidential election has been postponed in Senegal,\u201d Tour\u00e9 said.
\nThe crucial vote has been dogged by controver-sies, from deadly clashes that resulted in Sall announ-cing that he would not seek a third term to the disquali-fication of two opposition leaders by the highest election authority. (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DAKAR, 3 Feb: Senegalese President Macky Sall on Saturday postponed presidential elections scheduled for Feb. 25, citing controversies over the disqualification of some candidates and allegations of corruption in election-related cases. Sall \u2014 who is not seeking another term in office \u2014 said he signed a decree repealing the law that convened the electoral body […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-233914","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233914\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}