DAKAR: Senegalese Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko said Friday that his government would submit legislation to repeal a law by former president Macky Sall granting amnesty for deadly political violence.
\nThe controversial amnesty was granted just before March 2024 elections as Sall sought to calm protests sparked by his last-minute postponement of the vote in the traditionally stable West African country.
\nCritics say the move was to shield perpetrators of serious crimes, including homicides, committed during three years of political tensions between February 2021 and February 2024.
\nBut it also allowed Sonko, a popular opposition figure, to stand in the elections after court convictions had made him ineligible, as well as Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who eventually won the presidency.
\nSonko\u2019s government pledged earlier this month to investigate dozens of deaths resulting from the political violence between 2021 and 2024.
\n\u201cIn addition to putting compensation for victims into the budget, a draft law will be submitted to your august Assembly to repeal the March 6, 2024 amnesty so that light may be shed and responsibilities determined on whatever side they may lie,\u201d Sonko said in a highly awaited policy speech to lawmakers.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s not a witch hunt and even less vengeance … It\u2019s justice, the foundation without which social peace cannot be built,\u201d Sonko said.
\nSonko\u2019s speech also laid out plans for the next five years to pull Senegal out of three years of economic and political turmoil that have sent unemployment soaring.
\nHe and Faye, who won the presidency and in November secured a landslide victory in parliament, now have a clear path for implementing an ambitious, leftist reform agenda.
\n\u201cWe must carry out a deep and unprecedented break never seen in the history of our country since independence\u201d from France, Sonko told lawmakers.
\nHe said Senegal remained \u201clocked into the colonial economic model\u201d and vowed an overhaul of public action and tax reforms to foster \u201chome-grown growth.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DAKAR: Senegalese Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko said Friday that his government would submit legislation to repeal a law by former president Macky Sall granting amnesty for deadly political violence. The controversial amnesty was granted just before March 2024 elections as Sall sought to calm protests sparked by his last-minute postponement of the vote in the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":74854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74840"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74855,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74840\/revisions\/74855"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}