Appeal against Sonko’s return to parliament collapses

The Senegalese Constitutional Council yesterday declared itself incompetent to rule on the appeal filed against the integration of Ousmane Sonko into the National Assembly, thus definitively removing any legal hurdle in the way for the Pastef leader to take his parliamentary seat.

On June 1, Tafsir Thioye and 17 other parliamentarians filed an appeal with the Constitutional Council seeking to have the May 24, 2026 decision by which the Bureau of the National Assembly integrated Ousmane Sonko as an MP declared unconstitutional.

The plaintiffs argued that the Constitutional Council had jurisdiction to hear the case, given its dual role as judge of the regularity of parliamentary elections and regulator of the functioning of institutions. They relied in particular on Articles 92 of the Constitution and 2 of Organic Law No. 2016-23 of July 14, 2016, as well as on several previous decisions of the Constitutional Court.

 But meeting in a session yesterday June 17, under the interim chairmanship of Ms. Aminata Ly Ndiaye, Vice-President,the Council dismissed the applicants’ arguments one by one. It first declared that Article 92, paragraph 3 of the Constitution strictly limits its jurisdiction in electoral matters to national elections only, and that this jurisdiction ceases upon the proclamation of the final election results. It then noted that reviewing the legality of an administrative act does not fall within its purview, except when that act directly contributes to the regularity of an ongoing electoral process. However, the contested decision of May 24, 2026, was issued well after the announcement of the results of the early parliamentary elections of November 17, 2024. It concerns exclusively the integration of a former member of the Government who became a member of parliament following the termination of his ministerial duties, and is therefore not directly related to the regularity of the electoral process. For all these reasons, the Council concluded that it lacked jurisdiction to rule on the matter.

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