Senegal’s government has dissolved a major opposition party within hours of the party’s popular president and opposition leader saying a judge had ordered his arrest.
Ousmane Sonko, a charismatic opposition figure widely supported by Senegal’s youth, was in prison on Monday as he awaited trial on new criminal charges, said his party’s communications director, El Malick Ndiaye.
The Senegalese government, meanwhile, restricted mobile internet services on Monday, citing “dissemination of hateful and subversive messages on social networks”, according to Moussa Bocar Thiam, the communications minister. People throughout Senegal reported they were not able to access the internet.
Sonko is popular among Senegal’s youth and has been seen as a threat to the ruling party ahead of the 2024 election. His supporters have said the charges are to prevent him from running again for president after he placed third in the 2019 race.
“I’ve just been unjustly placed under a committal order,” Sonko wrote on his Facebook page on Monday.
It was unclear when a trial might take place. Sonko has been accused of calling for insurrection, conspiring against the state, threatening national security and other charges.
On Monday, Senegal’s interior minister issued a statement claiming Sonko’s opposition party had been dissolved. The Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity (Pastef) party has “frequently called on its supporters to take part in insurrectionary movements”, said a statement from Senegal’s interior minister, Antoine Félix Diome.
Diome blamed the opposition party’s leaders for causing loss of life and the looting of properties during deadly protests in June sparked by Sonko’s conviction and sentencing to two years in prison for “corrupting youth”.
The opposition party’s dissolution was criticised by the former prime minister Aminata Touré as an “unprecedented setback” in the west African country’s democratic history. It further raised concerns about next year’s presidential election in Senegal, long considered a bastion of democracy and a regional leader in diplomacy.
“In his despotic determination to hold on to power in Senegal, albeit by proxy, Macky Sall has just opened the floodgates to chaos by imprisoning, on spurious grounds, his main opponent Ousmane Sonko,” said a Pastef communique on Monday, after Diome’s claim to have disbanded the party.
“Even if they dissolve Pastef, they can’t dissolve its spirit,” Ndiaye said.
Sonko said a judge in the capital, Dakar, ordered him held temporarily after fresh charges on Saturday, including conspiracy against the state and calls for insurrection.
From his cell in Sebikotane prison, just outside the capital, Dakar, Sonko could still run for president in the 2024 election, communications director Ndiaye said, a claim the Associated Press could not immediately verify.
“If the Senegalese people, for whom I have always fought, abdicate and decide to leave me in the hands of Macky Sall’s regime, I will, as always, submit to God’s will,” Sonko wrote on his Facebook page.