As Senegal holds its presidential election Sunday, mediatory role of former President Olusegun Obasanjo in the political crisis plaguing the country suffered a setback last night as anti-President Abdoulaye Wade protesters turned down Obasanjo's proposed two-year in office for Wade and ordered the former Nigerian President to leave their country.
Obasanjo, who arrived Senegal last week to mediate a solution to the political standoff in the country, had told the people at a news conference that Wade would step down after two years of his election for a third term in office.
His news conference was however interrupted by anti-Wade protesters who screamed: "Leave our country Mr. Obasanjo. We will never accept it."
Eighty five-year-old Wade has thrown himself up for re-election in today's presidential race. He is, however, running for a third term in office, contrary to the term limits he had introduced into the country's constitution.
But opposition has since accused his party of buying off the country's institutions including the judge who heads the court and whose salary was said to have been increased to $10,000 a month, according to the court's spokesman.Wade's hope for a third term in office was given a boost when the country's highest court ruled that he could stand for the election.
Unfortunately, the court verdict has since resulted in a political standoff, a development that necessitated Obasanjo's mediation.
Although, Wade had argued severally that he has the right to run for a third term since he was elected on the basis of the previous constitution which did not have term limits, he recently told local journalists that he might consider stepping down after three years instead of serving the full constitutional seven-year term following escalating tension.
Wade, who was believed to have assumed power with a degree of goodwill some 12 years ago, is now rated as having frittered them away in the struggle for power.
"For many years, we all wrote and spoke about Senegal as being different," said Chris Fomunyoh, a senior associate at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs in Washington. "Now I think President Wade has deprived us of being able to use that phrase anymore. All of the ills that are undermining the continent are playing out in Senegal."
Ibrahima Thioub, chair of the history department at Senegal's largest university said, "What Wade is trying to do is completely contrary to the history of Senegal.
Everyone is frustrated by his attitude. If he were to leave now after two terms, we would build a monument to him. Instead he's in the process of burying his own memory - and the history of our country."
French journalist, Gilles Delafon was hired by the Wade sometime ago to write his biography and in 2007, he was said to have spent three days interviewing Wade in his beach house on the Senegalese coast. He was said to have found a man who on the one hand spent his life fighting for the ideals of democracy, but on the other considered slain former Libyan ruler, Moammar Gaddafi, a good friend.
"He's a paradox. He built his career around the idea of being the legitimate democratic opponent. And yet here he is after he finally arrived, nullifying everything he spent years fighting for," Delafon said by telephone from France.
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