Senegal: President Macky Sall appoints a Prime Minister, a first since 2019

Published on: 09/17/2022 – 16:58 For the first time since 2019, Senegal has a Prime Minister again. Amadou Ba was appointed on Saturday by President Macky Sall, more than a month after legislative elections in which the presidential camp came out on top. More than a month after the legislative elections, Senegal has a Prime Minister. President Macky Sall appointed a new Prime Minister on Saturday, September 17, a post he had abolished in 2019 then restored in December 2021, then waiting for the local and legislative elections to be passed to make his choice. Amadou Ba, former Minister of the Chief of the State, was appointed by presidential decree in a very politically divided country, five days after a parliamentary return marked by a series of incidents and completed under the guard of the gendarmes. >> To read again: “Senegal: rural people, “forgotten” from the legislative elections “Faced with the rise in prices, the new head of government, former Minister of Finance from 2013 to 2019, and of Foreign Affairs between 2019 and 2020, will have the task of carrying out “broad consultations” and to take “new measures” on the social level, said Friday evening Macky Sall in an address to the nation broadcast on national television. and the Youth entrepreneurship, the fight against floods and the high rent will remain for me the top priority”, declared the Senegalese Head of State. These priorities were reiterated by the new Prime Minister in his first speech after the reading of the decree by the secretary general of the presidency. Supposed to make the functioning of the State more fluid, the abolition of the post of Prime Minister in May 2019 had established a new balance between the powers by reinforcing the presidential character of the Senegalese regime. At that time, the opposition and part of civil society had denounced the abolition of this post as an attempt to seize power by President Sall. Strongman Almost three and a half years later, Macky Sall is still criticized by the opposition for his solitary conduct of power. She also lends him the project of running for a third term in 2024. President Sall, elected in 2012 for seven years and re-elected in 2019 for five years, still remains vague about his intentions for 2024. On Friday, a concert to be held on Saturday and organized by civil society associations for term limits in Africa was banned by the authorities due to “risks of unrest”, triggering a wave of indignation on social networks. The presidential camp in Senegal had arrived slightly in the lead after the legislative elections of 31 July. He had kept an absolute majority in the National Assembly thanks to the rallying of an opposition deputy, despite a sharp drop in the number of his elected parliamentarians. Macky Sall also fell out with a figure of his clan, the head from his coalition’s list in the last legislative elections, former Prime Minister Aminata Mimi Touré, who was not chosen on Monday to take the presidency of Parliament and has since denounced “an injustice”. With AFP