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Wade claims Senegal poll
26/02/2007 07:59 - (SA)
Dakar - Senegal's veteran President Abdoulaye Wade on Monday claimed he had won a second mandate in Sunday's presidential vote, but his assertion was challenged by opponents.
"We have largely won in the first round. They are the first strong and unchanging trends," Cheikh Diallo, head of public relations for Wade told AFP on Monday.
Macky Sall, Wade's campaign manager and also the country's prime minister said the octogenarian had garnered 57% of the votes according to partial and unofficial results.
"Wade largely surpassed the 50% mark needed to be elected in the first round," said Sall.
No official results had been published hours after polling stations closed, and Wade's opponents described his victory claim as "bluff".
Prior to the vote many of his challengers, including a former prime minister he sacked two years ago, Idriss Seck, 47, have said only electoral fraud would make it possible for him to win outright in the first round.
And even before the official closing time of polls, Wade's supporters had driven around the streets of the capital blowing car and motorcycle horns in celebration.
"It is an unfounded bluff. No candidate can reach the 50% mark, a second round is inescapable," said Khalifa Sall, the campaign manager for Ousmane Tanor Dieng, candidate of the ex-ruling Socialist party.
"Wade is at 48%," he said, adding a second round would be in keeping with democratic norms. He has earlier said Senegalese would not accept Wade's victory proclamations.
"We are still planning for a second round," he said, raising fears of unrest in one of Africa's most stable democracies and the only west African nation not to have experienced a military coup since its independence, in 1960.
- AFP
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