Senegal Clears the Field for Sall Again Ahead of Sunday’s Presidential Vote

Senegal Clears the Field for Sall Again Ahead of Sunday’s Presidential Vote
Builders gather around a campaign poster of Senegalese President Macky Sall, who is running for re-election, in Ngor village, near the capital, Dakar, Feb. 20, 2019 (Photo by Anna Pujol-Mazzini).

DAKAR, Senegal—President Macky Sall’s face is ubiquitous along the Corniche, Dakar's main seaside road. “Votez Macky,” billboards declare in capital letters between ads for Chinese-manufactured tea and energy drinks. With each poster comes a different reason to give the incumbent a second term in Sunday’s election:

Because he started building a $1 billion high-speed train project from the capital to the newly built city of Diamniadio; because he is responsible for “rice self-sufficiency,” after Senegal’s rice production more than doubled to reach some 1.1 million tons during his presidency; because he built a modern Senegal.

Further along the Corniche, one lonely poster of another presidential hopeful, Idrissa Seck, has been covered with black paint.

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