Senegal's president looks to win parliamentary majority

Senegal's president looks to win parliamentary majority

DAKAR (AFP): Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade looked poised
on Monday to win a parliamentary majority on early election
results, a year after dealing a first blow to socialists
entrenched in power for four decades.

The Sopi coalition backing Wade, who won a presidential poll
in March last year, was set to take between 45 and 53 percent of
the 120 National Assembly seats on unofficial results from
Sunday's general election.

Some analysts and newspapers were already saying that Sopi,
which means "change" in the Wolof language, and groups political
movements around Wade's Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS), had
won the "third round of the presidential poll".

For the Socialist Party and other opposition movements, these
results appeared to crush their hopes of preventing the 75-year-
old economic liberal and longtime opposition leader, of swinging
parliament firmly behind him.

The private Sud Quotidien said Sopi had captured 53 percent of
votes, against 25 percent for the Alliance of Forces for Progress
(AFP) and 16 percent for the former ruling Socialist Party.

"Tidal wave for Sopi," read the headline in Monday's
independent Walfadjiri, while Le Soleil daily said: "Wade is
confirmed..., Sopi the big winner."

Observers agreed, however, that the victory for the
presidential coalition was less an endorsement of the track
record of Wade's first year in office than an expression of
continuing hope in the promises of change he made on taking
office.

Wade has considerable charisma and campaigned tirelessly to
gain a majority for his backers, drawing criticism from his
rivals for getting involved in the election himself.

The socialists and other opposition parties focussed their
campaigns on the president's "amateurism", lack of experience in
office and his failure to tackle social issues such as high
unemployment, an ailing welfare service and big problems in the
educational sector.