Macky Sall teaches Paul Biya democratic values
By Nfr Hanson Nchanji
In 2008, Cameroon’s president, Paul Biya, who once said, ‘he wants to be remembered for bringing democracy to Cameroon’, changed the constitution that remove the presidential term limit from two terms, seven years each, to seven years, infinitive terms.
Despite protests that started one month after the amendment of the constitution, Paul Biya remained unbothered and instead used security operatives to kill, injure and arrest several protesters.
On 10 April 2008, Cameroon’s lower House of parliament, the National Assembly passed a bill to amend Law 96/06 to change the Constitution to provide the president with immunity from prosecution for acts as president and to allow the chief executive to run for unlimited re-elections, along with a number of other changes. The vote took place after the opposition Social Democratic Front (SDF) representatives walked out of the assembly, and just one month after the widespread violence that resulted in dozens of deaths and hundreds of arrests of demonstrators protesting price rises and the proposed constitutional changes.
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The 2008 food riot was also sparked by political instability and anger over the revision of the constitution. Paul Biya will later win the 2011 presidential elections and that of 2018.
In reality, the president was not supposed to seek another mandate after 2011 but he chose to pass by his majority-dominated parliamentarians to make himself a ‘life president’.
Contrary to Paul Biya, is Senegal’s Macky Sall who announced on Monday, July 3, 2023, that he will not seek a third mandate in the February 25, 2024 polls.
In 2016, Senegalese voted in a referendum to adopt a revision of the 2001 constitution that limited the term from 7 to 5 years.
Macky Sall had enjoyed a seven-year mandate before seeing his second reduced to five. However, the presidential majority selected him as their next candidate for 2024 citing that after the revision of the constitution, Macky Sall has served only one term in the new status, thus he has another chance to serve five years.
Article 27 of the 2016 constitution stated that “The term of office of the President of the Republic shall be five years. No one may serve more than two consecutive terms.”
During his live speech on his official Facebook account, Macky Sall acknowledged that there are still arguments for him to seek another mandate.
But he shall not be doing so because he intends to keep the legacies left behind by his predecessors who in all efforts to maintain democratic principles, respected the law and the people.
Even though opinions hold that Macky Sall was frightened by weeks of protests that erupted after the sentencing of an opposition figure, Sonko, and that an announcement of a third mandate would have thrown the country into chaos, Sall remains selfish in his style and send a strong message to those African leaders like Paul Biya of Cameroon, who wants to remain president for life, irrespective of their environmental context.
The Sall example has made Senegal remain the beacon of democracy in 14 Francophone African countries.
However, protesters are demanding that the courts should reverse a two-year sentence on opposition Ousmane Sonko, his alleged role in corrupting the minds of the youths.
