Two opposition leaders in Senegal are excluded from the final list of presidential candidates

BY BABACAR DIONE
Associated Press

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Senegal’s highest election authority has excluded two top opposition leaders from the final list of candidates for the West African nation’s presidential election next month. The list published Saturday by Senegal’s Constitutional Council named 20 candidates, including Prime Minister Amadou Ba, who has the backing of outgoing President Macky Sall. The council said opposition leader Ousmane Sonko, who finished third in the country’s 2019 presidential election, was disqualified from the ballot because of a defamation conviction. Sonko is currently imprisoned on a different charge but was widely seen as the politician with the best chance of defeating Sall’s ruling party. Sonko’s party called his disqualification “the most dangerous precedent in the political history of Senegal.”