UN campaign trail takes former president Macky Sall back to Senegal
Sall is due to meet his successor, President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, on Friday afternoon before leaving Dakar immediately afterwards.
The brief visit is "part of the consultations and visits I have undertaken in connection with my candidacy" for the UN post, he wrote on X earlier this week, saying he anticipated "having the opportunity to return to Dakar on another occasion to meet with activists and supporters".
Sall, who led Senegal from 2012 to 2024 and now lives in Morocco, is hoping to secure the government's official support for his candidacy to replace Antonio Guterres as UN secretary-general.
He remains a divisive figure in Senegal following his unsuccessful attempt to postpone the 2024 presidential election, a move that triggered deadly protests and was ultimately struck down by the Constitutional Council.
Senegal's Court of Auditors also said Sall's government misreported key economic data, including debt and deficit figures, leading to discrepancies that prompted the International Monetary Fund to suspend its loans. Sall denies any wrongdoing.
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'Disastrous track record'
Associations representing the families of people who died in opposition protests during Sall's rule have expressed anger at his meeting with Faye, and called on the president to honour his pledge to deliver justice.
A general amnesty passed in the final weeks of Sall's government ruled out prosecutions for offences by both security forces and protesters during violent demonstrations between 2021 and 2024. Last year, lawmakers partially lifted the amnesty for the most serious crimes.
Seydi Gassama, the Senegal director of rights group Amnesty International, which is assisting families of those who died to pursue legal proceedings, said Sall's human rights record should put him out of the running for the UN's top job.
"More than 67 people were killed," he told RFI. "Never in Senegal's history – not even during the era of [first president Léopold Sédar] Senghor's one-party state in the 1960s – has there been such repression. No one should support a man with such a disastrous track record."
The head of a collective representing "victims of the Macky Sall regime", Boubacar Seye, told RFI's correspondent in Dakar he was shocked to see Sall received as if nothing had happened.
"Memory cannot be sacrificed on the altar of diplomacy," he said. "Today, families are still mourning their children, the injured still bear the scars of the crackdown, and those arbitrarily detained have had no redress."
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UN ambitions
Sall is one of five candidates for the UN post so far, alongside former Costa Rican vice-president Rebeca Grynspan, Chile's former president Michelle Bachelet, Argentine diplomat Rafael Grossi, and Maria Fernanda Espinosa, a diplomat from Ecuador.
The UN is due to choose its 10th secretary-general this year for a five-year term beginning 1 January 2027.
If chosen, Sall would become the third African secretary-general after Egypt's Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Ghana's Kofi Annan.
Sall was nominated by Burundi, the current chair of the African Union, but has failed to secure the support of his own country or the continental bloc.
In March, around 20 AU member states, including Senegal, declined to back his candidacy.
(with newswires)