A major upset is on the cards in Senegal as the country’s opposition leader Bassirou Diomaye Faye has emerged as favourite to win Senegal’s presidential election after close of voting on Sunday where millions of voters took part in a largely peaceful exercise.
A total of 17 candidates stood for the presidential election in Senegal. The incumbent president, Macky Sall is however not one of them, having attained maximum terms allowed in the Senegalese Constitution. His ruling coalition presented Amadou Ba as candidate.
Amadou Ba has rejected reports of defeat and said he expects that the election will go to a run-off vote to decide a winner in the worst case scenario.
Senegal’s most likely new president Faye is 44 years old and was a senior official in the Pastef party led by Ousmane Sonko, and was had been in jail only days before the election. He emerged as the opposition front-runner following the disqualification of Mr. Ousmane Sonko from the race because of a defamation conviction.
As it was announced on TV that Faye won majority of the votes in the first set of tallies, spontaneous celebrations erupted in the capital Dakar. Five opposition candidates have also declared Mr Faye the winner.
Senegal, a country of 18 million people has 15,633 polling stations with 7.3 million registered voters. Final provisional results are expected to be announced by Tuesday.
The election had been due to take place last month but the outgoing president postponed it indefinitely, triggering deadly opposition protests and crackdown by security forces.