{"id":33044,"date":"2019-02-24T09:36:19","date_gmt":"2019-02-24T09:36:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=33044"},"modified":"2019-02-24T09:36:19","modified_gmt":"2019-02-24T09:36:19","slug":"senegal-elections-sall-poised-to-win-re-election-as-polls-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=33044","title":{"rendered":"Senegal elections: Sall poised to win re-election as polls open"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Dakar, Senegal <\/strong>– Polls have opened in Senegal<\/a>‘s\u00a0presidential election, the first since a 2016 referendum approved a cut in presidential mandates from seven to five years.<\/p>\n

At least 6.5 million Senegalese registered to take part in the poll, which will be open from 08:00 GMT until 18:00 GMT on Sunday.<\/span><\/p>\n

The electoral commission has set up about 15,000 voting stations across the West African country of 15 million people.<\/p>\n

President Macky Sall<\/a>, who is seeking a second and final term in office, became the frontrunner after\u00a0two of Senegal’s most well-known opposition leaders were barred from running in the election.<\/p>\n

“Victory in the first round is indisputable,” Sall told a recent Dakar campaign rally. <\/p>\n

The former mayor of the capital, Khalifa Sall, who is not related to the president, is serving a five-year jail term on corruption charges, while Karim Wade, son of the country’s former leader Abdoulaye Wade, has gone into exile in Qatar<\/a> after serving half of a six-year jail term for corruption.<\/p>\n

Both deny the charges, which they say are politically motivated.<\/p>\n

Vote counting will start shortly after the polls close with provincial results released by February 26 and official final results not later than March 1.<\/p>\n

A candidate must secure more than 50 percent of the votes to be declared the winner.<\/p>\n

If no contestant has garnered that, a runoff between the two candidates that secured the most votes in the first round will be held on March 24.<\/p>\n

The election period has been relatively peaceful but Amnesty International said at least two people have been killed in campaign-related incidents since February 4.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Dakar’s Medina neighbourhood, a short distance from the city centre, voters had started queuing up long before sun rise.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At a polling station in the Alasane Ndiaye Allo primary school, Mousse Cisse said voting was proceeding smoothly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Everything is going well. I will vote then go back home to wait for the result,” the 45-year-old trader added, as more people trickled into the polling station at Alasane Ndiaye Allo primary school.<\/p>\n

Few steps away, dressed in a white traditional dress, Rosso Ba said she had waited for two hours to cast her ballot.<\/p>\n

“I want a positive change in my country. I want change to happen without any violence after the election,” the 55-year-old told Al Jazeera.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dakar, Senegal – Polls have opened in Senegal’s\u00a0presidential election, the first since a 2016 referendum approved a cut in presidential mandates from seven to five years. At least 6.5 million Senegalese registered to take part in the poll, which will be open from 08:00 GMT until 18:00 GMT on Sunday. The electoral commission has set…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":33045,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}