Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at a constitutional crisis in Senegal, U.S. efforts to negotiate an Israel-Hamas cease-fire, and a Kenyan cult leader charged with murder.
“A Leap Into the Void”
Senegal’s National Assembly voted on Monday to postpone the country’s presidential election, slated for Feb. 25, until Dec. 15—nearly 10 months later than originally scheduled. This is Dakar’s first such election delay in the nation’s history, worrying some civil liberty watchdogs of declining freedoms in what was once a bastion of West African democracy.
“It is a leap into the void,” said human rights expert Alioune Tine. “The brutal, unconstitutional delay of the election plunges Senegal into uncertainty and violence.”
On Saturday, outgoing Senegalese President Macky Sall called for parliamentarians to suspend the election in order to investigate the Constitutional Council’s decision to bar certain candidates from running. However, some opposition leaders have accused Sall of delaying the vote to extend his time in power and sway the election results. Sall’s actions are a “constitutional coup,” said former Dakar mayor Khalifa Sall, no relation to Macky Sall, with another lawmaker accusing the president of “high treason.”
Violent protests erupted in the capital this week, including at the National Assembly, in response to the move. Sall’s administration deployed riot police to break up the demonstrations and restricted mobile internet access to crack down on so-called threats to public order. Opposition members who disapproved of Monday’s vote were forcibly removed from the chamber. Dollar bonds dropped on Tuesday following the news, and the International Monetary Fund is reportedly concerned about future investments in Dakar.
Sall is not allowed to run for a third term. Instead, he is backing Prime Minister Amadou Ba, who would maintain the ruling coalition’s grip on power. But Ba’s probability of success dipped last week when opposition leader Ousmane Sonko publicly supported the campaign of his party deputy, Bassirou Diomaye Faye. Sonko, who was arrested last year, is barred from running for fomenting insurrection, among other criminal charges that his supporters believe are politically motivated.
“Sall became convinced that Ba was going to lose to Bassirou Diomaye Faye, the radical running as Sonko’s stand-in, and chose to postpone the election to play for time,” François Conradie, the lead political economist at Oxford Economics Africa, told Bloomberg. Faye has been detained since April 2023 for defamation and contempt of court.
Sall accused the Constitutional Council of corruption on Saturday, an allegation that another barred candidate, Karim Wade of the opposition Senegalese Democratic Party, has latched onto. Wade was banned from running for president over his dual French citizenship, an allegation he has called “scandalous.” He renounced his French nationality last month.
Today’s Most Read
What We’re Following
Hostage, truce talks. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi and Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani on Tuesday to discuss ongoing cease-fire negotiations in the Israel-Hamas war. This is Blinken’s fifth shuttle diplomacy mission in the Middle East since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. Washington is pushing for a six-week truce that would allow for the exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners and the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza—an offer presented to Hamas last week.
Hamas announced on Tuesday that it had responded “positively” to the offer, but it described the terms of the deal differently than what was reportedly proposed. Qatar’s prime minister said Hamas’s response made Qatar “optimistic”; however, an unnamed senior Israeli official told Haaretz that Hamas’s response was actually negative because the conditions that the group set were unacceptable to Israel. U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that Hamas’s response “seems to be a little over the top,” but he added that Washington was continuing to negotiate.
The hostage negotiations took on new resonance on Tuesday when an Israeli internal assessment released to the New York Times said more than one-fifth of all remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza are dead. Most of the 32 victims are believed to have been killed on Oct. 7. Unconfirmed Israeli intelligence suggests that at least 20 other captives of the total remaining 136 people held may also be dead.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International published a report on Monday accusing Israeli troops of using “unlawful lethal force” against Palestinians in the West Bank with “near total impunity.” It called on the International Criminal Court to investigate the killings as possible war crimes. Around 260 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the Oct. 7 attack, Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila said in December 2023.
Nairobi’s murder trial. Kenyan authorities on Tuesday charged doomsday cult leader Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, along with 29 others, of killing 191 children. Mackenzie pleaded not guilty and was deemed fit to stand trial, which will begin on March 7. Prosecutors accused Mackenzie of instructing followers of his Good News International Church to starve themselves and their children to reach heaven.
Local authorities exhumed more than 400 bodies in the Shakahola forest in eastern Kenya last year. The children are believed to have been killed between January 2021 and September 2023. President William Ruto called the cult’s actions “terrorism,” and his administration said it plans to turn the forest into a national memorial. Yet victims’ families have criticized the courts for moving too slowly and treating those killed like perpetrators.
Santiago mourns. Former Chilean President Sebastián Piñera, 74, died in a helicopter crash on Tuesday in southern Chile’s Los Ríos region. It is unclear what caused the crash. Three other passengers are reported to have survived.
Piñera held office from 2010 to 2014 and from 2018 to 2022, during which he was known for his economic growth policies, efforts to curb unemployment, and fast COVID-19 response. However, heavy unrest over inequality and alleged state human rights violations marred Piñera’s second term, leading to the country’s lower house voting for his impeachment (though the Senate declined to remove him from office) as well as a rejected constitutional referendum.
Suspended death sentence. Beijing convicted Chinese Australian writer and businessman Yang Hengjun of espionage on Monday and gave him a suspended death sentence. If Yang does not commit any crimes for the next two years, his sentence will be reduced to life imprisonment.
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong called the decision “harrowing” and said Canberra will continue to advocate on Yang’s behalf. Yang has been detained in China since 2019, and Australia has accused Beijing’s courts of failing to uphold procedural fairness and basic standards of justice.
For the past few months, Canberra and Beijing have worked to warm diplomatic ties. China released an Australian journalist in October 2023 after a more than three-year detention for allegedly sharing state secrets, and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited Beijing last November in Canberra’s first premier visit since 2016. But some experts believe that Yang’s sentencing could backtrack this bilateral progress.
Chart of the Week
For the past two centuries, Sweden has followed a policy of neutrality to avoid direct conflict with Russia. But Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine changed that, FP’s Jack Detsch reports. If Sweden successfully joins NATO, it will dramatically alter the regional military map, and both parties hope it will give Russia greater pause before making any provocative moves toward the Nordic country. “Sweden wants to be NATO’s eyes and ears,” Detsch writes.
Odds and Ends
If you want to listen to the entirety of composer John Cage’s “As Slowly and Softly as Possible,” I wouldn’t recommend the organ performance currently underway in Halberstadt, Germany. The eight-page composition encourages musicians to abide by the piece’s title and perform it as slowly as possible. Performances typically last between 20 and 70 minutes, with some stretching as long as 16 hours. But the one at St. Burchardi Church aims to outdo all the others. The performance there began in 2001 and won’t conclude for another 616 years. On Monday, organists changed out the pipes for the first time in two years, adding a D note to an ongoing chord. Cue a very, very, very slow applause.
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