On July 4, millions across Senegal let out a sigh of relief when President Macky Sall announced in a nationwide address he would not run for a third term.
A 2016 constitutional referendum barred presidents from serving more than two five-year terms but Sall, elected four years earlier, had long maintained that he was eligible to stand for another mandate. The new law, he argued, effectively reset the clock on his term limits.
His long-running refusal to specify whether he would run in the February 2024 polls, and legal quagmires entrapping some of his political opponents under disputed…