Senegalese citizens went to the polls on Sunday, for legislative elections where the opposition competed to challenge President Macky Sall’s majority, in the hopes of curbing a potential bid for a third term.
Polls opened at 8 a.m. GMT and Senegal’s nearly 7 million eligible voters cast their ballots until 6 p.m. GMT, to elect 165 National Assembly deputies. Those elected will serve in the country’s single-chamber parliament for the next five years.
News agency Reuters reported that turnout had been low, at around 22% by midday Sunday.
Interior Minister Antoine Felix Abdoulaye Diom patrolled voting stations nationwide, reassuring that voting should proceed smoothly, despite floods in recent weeks.
The elections came amid rising tension between Sall and opposition. The latter fear that the president, whose second and final term in power expires in 2024, could use a new majority in parliament to extend his tenure.
The president and the ruling majority have been struggling to keep domestic discontent at bay, amid the global rise in fuel and food prices, instigated by the war in Ukraine.
“We have come to choose those who will sit for us in parliament. Above all, we expect them to help us in this period of inflation, and for prices to come down,” Omar Ba, one of the first to vote in Dakar’s Pikine neighborhood, said.