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| Five million flocked to the polls |
February 27, 2007, 14:45
Abdoulaye Wade, the Senegal leader’s camp said he was headed for a first-round win yesterday in Senegal's high-turnout election, but poll authorities warned against calling the result too soon. Wade's prediction that he will win with more than half the vote, which his 14 challengers said will be impossible to achieve without fraud, has raised fears of unrest in one of the few African states not to have had a coup since independence.
Macky Sall, the prime minister and manager of the Wade campaign, said partial figures compiled from its representatives at polling stations showed record turnout of 70% with a lead of around 57% for the octogenarian Wade. "These results (show) irrefutably that Wade is well clear of the 50% needed to be elected in the first round," Sall said early yesterday as supporters played music and danced outside Wade's Democratic Party's headquarters.
Official provisional results were not expected before today, a spokesperson for the Autonomous National Electoral Commission (CENA) told an international news agency. If no candidate wins a majority, a second-round run-off is scheduled for mid-March. "These are not official results and do not contribute to a climate of serenity," a CENA spokesperson said on Sunday after Wade's supporters said the president was headed for a first-round win.
Wade swept to power in 2000
Paris-based press freedom watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres issued a damning summary of election coverage, saying Senegal's state broadcaster RTS, news agency APS and Le Soleil , a daily newspaper had all disregarded the requirement for balanced coverage, dedicating virtually all their coverage to Wade.
West African election observers noted delays, problems with delivering polling equipment and the illegal presence of campaign photos and T-shirts around voting stations. "Nevertheless, the day of the poll, the opportunity was given to Senegalese voters to express their choice. The presidential election of February 25, 2007 was sufficiently free and fair," observers from regional bloc ECOWAS said in a statement. Wade swept to power in 2000, ending four decades of Socialist Party rule in what was at the time one of Africa's first transfers from one elected government to another.
Backers of Ousmane Tanor Dieng, the Socialist candidate who had said they had "credible information ... of a planned strategy of fraud", dismissed Wade's early claims of victory as "fantasy". Wade has campaigned on ambitious job-creation projects to build highways, five-star hotels, railways and airports to stem an exodus of desperate young migrants leaving for Europe.
Political violence rare in Senegal
Opponents criticise him for failing to tackle rural poverty, weak infrastructure, rising prices and a lack of jobs in a country where more than half the 12 million population is under 18 and most people live by farming and fishing.
Apart from a long-running low-level insurgency by separatists in the southern province of Casamance, political violence is rare in Senegal. But tensions have spilled over into isolated clashes during the campaign; stoking fears of further trouble should the opposition reject the results. - Reuters
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