On Sunday, January 23, 2022, nearly seven million Senegalese voters were expected to elect mayors and departmental councils in a combined election that had been postponed three times. More than a dozen political parties and coalitions competed in 500 municipalities and 46 departments. Despite the plurality of the political formations, three coalitions drew most of the popular attention and votes.

The ruling coalition, Benno Bokk Yakkaar (BBY), had the daunting task of consolidating its political gains since 2012, when it triumphed in legislative, municipal and presidential elections. One of BBY’s major challenges was to win in large cities, such as Dakar, Thies, Saint-Louis, Kaolack, and Ziguinchor and safeguard its electoral base following a 2019 presidential election victory. Further hurdles arose from dissent within the President’s camps that led many allies to form parallel sub-coalitions. Despite conserving the majority of the districts, the BBY’s margin of victory significantly diminished.

Yewwi Askan Wi (YAW), a coalition spearheaded by Ousmane Sonko and Barthelemy Dias, both considered the rising stars of Senegalese politics, along with Khalifa Sall, a former ally of President Macky Sall. All three have been the subject of legal challenges: Khalifa Sall was imprisoned in 2018 for alleged embezzlement of public funds, losing his job as mayor of Dakar before being pardoned by President Sall (no relation). Following his official candidacy nomination for Dakar mayor, Dias appeared in court regarding a 2011 case involving the death of a young man named Ndiaga Diouf. The latter was shot dead after he and a group of people (allegedly sent by the then ruling Senegalese Democratic Party–PDS) attacked Dias and his Mermoz Sacré-Coeur City Hall. Although he claimed self-defense, Dias spent six months in prison in 2011 and was freed in 2012 when Macky Sall took office. Sonko, a rising politician popular among the younger Senegalese, is the subject of a rape charge that led to unprecedented civil unrest across the country. On March 3, 2021, Senegal experienced the worst popular uprising in its history following Sonko’s arrest. A young masseuse, Adji Sarr, alleges that Sonko, the most vocal opponent of the Sall regime, raped her several times in the massage parlor and threatened her life. Sonko denies all allegations, however his subsequent arrest as well as growing frustration with the ruling coalition sparked demonstrations across the country targeting the ruling coalition, government officials, public infrastructures and French-owned multinationals. After five days of bloody confrontation, and 14 people dead, President Sall mobilized the army to support the embattled police and Sonko was released under judicial supervision.

Although Sonko’s case is still pending, the spectra of the uprising, doubled with the socio-economic ordeals of COVID-19, continue to hover over Senegal’s popular consciousness. The uprising particularly fueled media and popular conversations as well as the campaign’s rhetoric and swayed votes against the regime. Therefore, the significance of these elections lay in a trinary: first, the need for the Sall regime to “reconcile” with the masses post-uprising, to test its waning approval rating and the citizens’ eagerness to express their grievances against a precarious and dependent economic; second, a weaponized judicial system under attack (by the executive branch); and finally a deliberate lack of clarity regarding President Sall’s intent to run for a third term in 2024. The latter point is at the heart of the Senegalese political conversation. President Sall declared on live TV in December 2019 “my response is neither yes nor no” to the question of whether or not he was going to seek a third term. To many citizens, this seemed like overt constitutional defiance and a gross lack of respect vis-à-vis the people to whom he promised: “In 2019, if the people renew their trust in me, this will be my last term. I think it’s very clear and it’s settled by the constitution.” Supporters of the YAW coalition leaders continue to deem charges brought against Sonko, Dias and Khalifa Sall as politically motivated. Meanwhile, YAW is banking on a bottom-up strategy to dominate the municipal districts and weaken the dominant coalition in the upcoming legislative (2022) and presidential elections (2024). Insisting on President Macky Sall’s ineligibility for a third term (per the current constitution), YAW plans to support several candidacies in 2024 and coalesce behind its highest-scoring candidate for an eventual runoff election.

A third coalition, Wàllu Senegal, is led by the former ruling party PDS. Besides striving to leave a solid imprint in the municipal election, Wàllu Senegal also aims to restore the popularity of the PDS, which has been in decline since it lost power in 2012. (Abdoulaye Wade, Senegal’s president from 2000 to 2012, and whose unconstitutional race for a third term lost them that election, is still listed as the party’s General Secretary.) Apart from Sonko’s who is a staunch self-proclaimed pan-Africanist, there are no apparent ideological demarcations between these political coalitions.

Election day in January 2022 remained relatively peaceful around the country in contrast with the cycle of violence noted during the campaigns. Three days prior to the vote, severe clashes took place in Dakar between opposing supporters of Barthelemy Dias, contender for the highly coveted mayoralty of Dakar, and members of the Coalition BBY. Both camps blamed the other for incidents that resulted in three people being seriously injured. Similar acts of violence occurred in Ziguinchor, Sonko’s stronghold, where supporters physically fought with members of the ruling coalition on election day.