Politics
Senegal votes to reduce presidential terms from 7 to 5 years in referendum
Senegal has voted overwhelmingly in favor of limiting presidential terms from 7 to 5 years, the country’s interior minister said Tuesday, after a weekend referendum widely seen as a test of the president’s popularity.
Interior minister Abdoulaye Daouda Diallo said that 62.9 percent voted “YES” on constitutional reforms while 37.1 percent voted against it.
Turnout was 40.42 percent of eligible voters, he told a press conference.The official referendum results will be published on Friday by the country’s electoral commission and require constitutional court approval.
President Macky Sall was elected in 2012 partly on a platform to reduce the presidential mandate from 7 years to 5. Sall had said reducing his own mandate would set an example within Africa, but the country’s top court rejected his proposal in February, triggering the referendum to allow the reforms to come into force once Sall leaves office.
The referendum became a de facto YES/NO vote on Sall’s popularity, eclipsing more than a dozen other proposed points of reform to the constitution.
Source: AFP