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| Polling station officials sit behind a ballot box during a referendum on constitutional reforms in Dakar on March 20, 2016 ©Seyllou (AFP) |
Senegal has voted
overwhelmingly in favour of limiting presidential terms to five years, the
country's interior minister said Tuesday, after a weekend referendum widely
seen as a test of the president's popularity.
AFP
report continues:
Interior
minister Abdoulaye Daouda Diallo said that 62.9 percent voted "Yes"
on constitutional reforms while 37.1 per cent voted against it.
Turnout
was 40.42 percent of eligible voters, he told a press conference.
The
official referendum results will be published on Friday by the country's
electoral commission and require constitutional court approval.
President
Macky Sall was elected in 2012 partly on a platform to reduce the presidential
mandate from seven years to five.
Sall
had said reducing his own mandate would set an example within Africa, where
many leaders cling to power beyond their allotted term.
But
Senegal's top court rejected his proposal in February, triggering the
referendum to allow the reforms to come into force once Sall leaves office.
Opposition
parties and several civil society groups urged a "No" vote, arguing
that Sall reneged on his promise to leave office early and criticizing the
referendum as a cop-out.
The referendum became a de
facto Yes/No vote on Sall's popularity, eclipsing more than a dozen other
proposed points of reform to the constitution.
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