PASTEF WALKS OUT OF GOVERNMENT TALKS AS SENEGAL’S POLITICAL CRISIS ENTERS NEW CHAPTER.
Senegal’s political standoff has taken another sharp turn.
PASTEF-Les Patriotes, the ruling party that controls 130 of the 165 seats in the National Assembly, has formally announced it will not participate in President Bassirou Diomaye Faye’s incoming government, following the breakdown of cabinet formation talks.
In a statement issued on June 1, the party confirmed that multiple meetings were held with the president over the composition of the new cabinet.
While some common ground was found, major disagreements persisted over the role and representation of the parliamentary majority within the executive branch. Party leader Ousmane Sonko held a lengthy face-to-face meeting with Faye on the same day, after which PASTEF submitted fresh proposals. Those proposals were rejected.
The party has therefore declared that none of its members will serve as ministers in the incoming government.
The announcement is extraordinary by any measure. Senegal now finds itself in a situation where the president and the party that dominates parliament are governing in complete opposition to each other.
Faye will form a cabinet without his own party. Sonko will run the National Assembly from the outside. And PASTEF, despite wishing the new government success, holds the legislative power to make governing extremely difficult.
What began with a dismissal has now grown into a full institutional rupture at the heart of Senegalese democracy.
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And so is the case of Tonse Pamodzi alliance and all similar political groupings with two centres of power.
You cannot serve two masters at the same time.