New Cabinet for Senegal, PASTEF Excluded

Senegal’s President Bassirou Faye has named a new cabinet. This happened less than two weeks after he fired his ally, Ousmane Sonko, and dissolved the government.

The new cabinet, which has 30 members, was announced on Monday during a live broadcast. This came an hour after Mr Sonko, the fired prime minister, said his party, PASTEF, would no longer be part of the government.

Mr Sonko shared on Monday that PASTEF will not take part in the government. He also said no minister from the party would be representing them. After this announcement, Mr Faye revealed his new cabinet members. None of them came from the PASTEF party, according to Bloomberg.

In a post on X, Mr Sonko mentioned that he had a meeting with Mr Faye. He said that “points of disagreement” appeared regarding PASTEF's role in the government. PASTEF holds a significant number of seats in parliament.

“Due to this, PASTEF will not participate in the next government. We will not have any minister there. We will share more details later. We wish the new team every success,” he wrote.

This situation shows the ongoing political tensions between the two former allies. This tension is making it harder for the country to handle its debt crisis.

In 2024, the IMF stopped its $1.8 billion lending program to Senegal after finding out that the government misreported debt figures. This led to an increase in the country’s debt burden to 132 percent of GDP by the end of 2024.

The tension comes from a power struggle over government control and disagreements on economic plans and negotiations with the IMF.

Mr Sonko felt that President Faye was moving away from the party's original goals. He had already threatened to take PASTEF out of the government and return to the opposition.

A few days after Mr Sonko was fired, Mr Faye appointed Ahmadou Al Aminou Lo as the new prime minister. Mr Lo is an economist and previously worked at the Central Bank of West African States.

Meanwhile, Mr Sonko was elected speaker of parliament just four days after he was dismissed. This paper reported on his election, which took place hours after he was reinstated as a lawmaker and became the deputy speaker.

Mr Sonko received 132 out of 133 votes cast to become president of the National Assembly. His victory was due to PASTEF's strong majority in parliament.

The former speaker, El Malick Ndiaye, stepped down from his position to allow Mr Sonko to take over.