Pastef-Les Patriotes, the parliamentary majority party, held its first national congress since its founding in 2014 from Saturday 6 to Sunday 7 June in Dakar. The gathering was an opportunity to gain fresh momentum amid a reshaping of the political landscape, to redraw the party’s guidelines under the leadership of its president Ousmane Sonko, and to recalibrate Senegal’s political governance.
The congress concluded yesterday, Sunday 7 June, at Dakar Arena with a popular rally. Ousmane Sonko, confirmed as president and leader of the majority party, addressed a crowd of devoted supporters, outlining a three-part political roadmap: ideological consolidation of the party, direct challenge to the executive, and locking down the electoral calendar. Sonko began by drawing lessons from what he called ‘the first phase of clarification,’ which began with the large gathering on 8 November. ‘Politically, Pastef has remained Pastef and emerges from this clarification stronger,’ he noted. While acknowledging that this period brought ‘surprises and disappointments,’ he said he personally experienced none. He then claimed credit for his movement’s major struggles: fighting corruption, pursuing justice, renegotiating contracts, and, above all, maintaining the majority in the National Assembly.
On governance, however, Sonko launched direct attacks against the head of state. ‘This country has suffered enough from plots and schemes,’ he declared, urging each institution to stay within its constitutional role without being manipulated by personal ambitions. The criticism was explicit: ‘Even if the president wants to satisfy political ambitions, we must not accept that he weakens the institutions.’
In response to those raising the spectre of an institutional crisis, he offered a sovereign interpretation of the election results: ‘There is no institutional crisis in Senegal. It is the people who chose to entrust the presidency to one person and the National Assembly to another.’
Parliamentary blockade on local elections
Ousmane Sonko firmly closed the door on any possible postponement of local elections, wielding both political and procedural arguments. ‘Pastef will never agree to a postponement of local elections,’ he stated, before reminding the executive of constitutional constraints: ‘To do so, you must go through the Assembly and pass an enabling law.’
After the investiture meeting of the Pastef president, the path seemed set for a new reconfiguration of the political landscape and a new governance of the political game.