Senegal candidate vows to alter Spain migrant deals
February 21, 2007
By Pascal Fletcher
REUTERS
8:19 a.m. February 21, 2007
DAKAR – A leading challenger to President Abdoulaye Wade in Senegal’s elections this weekend said on Wednesday he wanted to change accords with Spain that allow illegal Senegalese migrants to be repatriated.
Voters in the West African country will cast their ballots on Sunday in a presidential contest that has been dominated by debate over thousands of desperate young Senegalese risking their lives to try to reach Europe in flimsy fishing boats.
Ousmane Tanor Dieng, who is hoping to beat octogenarian Wade to put Senegal’s Socialist Party back in the presidency after a seven-year absence, condemned agreements made by Wade’s government with Madrid last year to combat illegal migration.
‘We’re going to renegotiate these accords signed by this government,’ Dieng, a 59-year-old former diplomat, told Reuters in an interview before heading out on the campaign trail.
The agreements with Madrid led to Spanish patrol boats deploying off Senegal to intercept migrants and around 5,000 young Senegalese who had come ashore illegally in the Canary Islands being flown back home under Spanish police escort.
‘That’s not acceptable,’ Dieng said.
The repatriations created a popular backlash against Wade, who is nevertheless widely expected to lead the field of 15 presidential candidates in Sunday’s first round vote. Many analysts believe however the contest will go to a second round.
Dieng and other opponents accuse Wade of ‘selling out’ the migrants for a Spanish pledge of 20 million euros ($26.28 million) of aid.
‘In exchange … Wade put these Senegalese who were in Spain at the mercy of the Spanish authorities,’ Dieng said.
He said if elected he would demand fresh migration accords negotiated in a multinational framework which would exclude rapid repatriation of illegal migrants and seek better conditions for Senegalese living abroad.
Offering aid in exchange for cooperation by West African governments, Spain has been struggling to stem the migrant exodus to its shores which saw more than 30,000 mostly Africans land in the Canaries last year, six times more than in 2005.
SOARING PRICES
Dieng, who served as diplomatic adviser to Senegal’s first two post-independence presidents, Socialists Leopold Sedar Senghor and Abdou Diouf, said Wade’s ‘tropical-liberal’ policies had brought more poverty to Senegal’s nearly 12 million people.
Wade, a sprightly, dapper African statesman well known abroad, was elected in 2000, ending 40 years of Socialist Party rule and pledging to end unemployment and improve living standards. He argues he has polished Senegal’s image as one of West Africa’s most stable nations in a turbulent region.
But opponents say the boatloads of parched, ragged young Senegalese staggering ashore in the Canary Islands show he has failed to deliver on his promises.
‘The cost of living today in Senegal is untenable, people’s buying power has been completely pulverised,’ Dieng said, adding prices of fuel and other basic necessities had rocketed under the rule of Wade’s Senegalese Democratic Party.
Dieng said this, and the splintering of the electoral coalition that brought Wade to power in 2000, made it impossible for the president to gain the 50 percent of votes needed to win outright in the first round.
He warned Wade and his supporters against trying to engineer a first round victory through ‘pre-fabricated results’.
‘The Wade government should know that we won’t accept a forced outcome,’ Dieng said, adding he expected to go into a second round as Wade’s challenger.
Dieng said that if elected he would apply a ‘good neighbour’ foreign policy and seek the participation of neighbouring states Gambia and Guinea-Bissau to try to end the long-running separatist insurgency in Senegal’s south Casamance province.
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