Senegal defends low poll turnout ‘normal’
June 4, 2007
Senegal on Monday defended the low poll turnout used by critics to put a question mark on the legitimacy of weekend legislative elections, saying the west African nation had never had enthusiastic voters.
"The turnout rate is 38 percent," Macoumba Koume, director of communication in the interior ministry, told AFP.
"This low turnout rate in legislative elections is not new in Senegal," he said. "In general terms, the presidential elections attract a higher turnout."
A 17-party opposition grouping had called for an unprecedented boycott of Sunday’s ballot, which looks set to be won by President Abdoulaye Wade’s ruling party.
AFP correspondents and local media reported that polling stations were far emptier than for February presidential elections that gave Wade his second term and for the last parliamentary elections in 2001, when slightly over two-thirds of voters cast ballots.
The governing Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS) looks set to win a new governing mandate with its coalition partners and the 81-year-old Wade dismissed the apparent success of the boycott.
Senegalese voters turned out in droves in the 2001 presidential elections, which were marked by a 67.4 percent turnout. The polls put Wade, an opposition figure, in power after former president Abdou Diouf’s two-decade rule.
Most heavyweight opposition figures were absent from the ballot papers, including former prime minister Idrissa Seck and Ousmane Tanor Dieng of the former ruling Socialist Party, who came second and third respectively in the presidential elections.
There were still some 4,000 candidates who vied for the 150 seats in the new and enlarged national assembly.
Wade’s PDS enjoyed a comfortable majority in the smaller outgoing parliament, holding 90 of the 120 seats.
The legislative polls had been postponed twice. The last delay, which forced authorities to drop plans to have it held concurrently with the presidential election, came after opposition allegations of "irregularities" of seat allocation.
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