Senegal’s recently ousted Prime Minister, Ousmane Sonko, announced on \u200cMonday that the political party he leads will not participate in the country’s new government, raising the prospect of political gridlock amid a daunting debt crisis.<\/p>\n
Sonko said in a post on X that he met on Monday with President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, his ally-turned-rival, and that “points \u200bof disagreement” emerged about the future role of the Pastef party, which holds a large parliamentary majority.<\/p>\n
Therefore Pastef “will \u200bnot participate in the next government and will not be represented by any ministers,” Sonko \u2060said.<\/p>\n
“We wish the new team every success.”<\/p>\n
Sonko’s announcement came one hour before his successor as Prime Minister, seasoned economist \u200bAhmadou Al Aminou Lo, unveiled the new 30-member government, retaining Cheikh Diba in the critical post of finance minister as negotiations \u200bcontinue with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) over a new lending programme.<\/p>\n
Diba’s portfolio is being expanded to also include the Economy Ministry, something Lo said would create more “coherence” in policymaking.<\/p>\n
The roster of Ministers appointed by Lo included at least three members of Pastef, seemingly contradicting Sonko’s earlier \u200bannouncement.<\/p>\n
The political upheaval comes as Senegal tries to navigate a crisis stemming from the discovery \u200bin 2024 of misreported debt by the previous government.<\/p>\n
The IMF froze its $1.8 billion lending programme with Senegal following the discovery of \u200cthe \u2060debt, which pushed the country’s end-2024 debt level to 132% of its economic output.<\/p>\n
Diba told parliament on May 22 that Senegal expects to resume talks with the IMF in the week of June 8 and hopes to reach agreement on key points by June 30.
\nLater that day, Faye sacked Sonko and dissolved the government, leading to Lo’s appointment and necessitating the \u200bnomination of a new cabinet.<\/p>\n
\u2014Reuters\u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":27027,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-36013","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"The roster of Ministers appointed by Lo included at least three members of Pastef, seemingly contradicting Sonko's earlier \u200bannouncement.","published_date":"","news_description":"The roster of Ministers appointed by Lo included at least three members of Pastef, seemingly contradicting Sonko's earlier \u200bannouncement.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36014,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36013\/revisions\/36014"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=36013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}