Senegal’s top judicial body rejected a constitutional amendment Thursday evening that would have expanded the role of parliament and reduced presidential powers, stopping a cornerstone project of the parliamentary majority in its tracks. The Constitutional Council ruled the law unconstitutional after President Bassirou Diomaye Faye challenged the procedure and asked for an emergency review. The machinery of the state moved fast. So did the fight over who gets to steer it.
Who Holds the Levers
The rejected law had passed last month, and the government said it would be put to a referendum. That route still kept the decision inside the same narrow corridors of power, with ordinary people expected to ratify a fight already underway among elites. Faye’s challenge to the legality of the procedure brought the dispute before the Constitutional Council, which then shut the door on the amendment by ruling it unconstitutional.
The reform itself would have strengthened parliament’s powers, replaced the Constitutional Council with a new Constitutional Court, and imposed stricter controls on the president’s power to dissolve the National Assembly. Those are not small tweaks. They are changes to the architecture of rule, the kind that decide which faction gets to command the apparatus and which one gets boxed in.
The council’s ruling effectively halted one of the parliamentary majority’s cornerstone projects. That majority sits at the center of the current power struggle, and the dispute has exposed how quickly constitutional language becomes a weapon when political blocs start fighting over control.
A Fractured Alliance at the Top
The debate over constitutional reform comes as political tensions have risen between Faye and his former prime minister, Ousmane Sonko. Sonko was dismissed and elected as the president of the National Assembly earlier this year. Their alliance, which had brought them to power in March 2024, gradually disintegrated. A new prime minister has since been appointed, and the formation of a new government is expected.
That split matters because it shows how fragile these governing arrangements are once the coalition of ambition starts cracking. The people below are left to watch the same names rotate through new offices while the state’s internal factions sort out who gets to issue orders next.
The opposition sees the initiative, proposed by Pastef, Sonko’s party, as political revenge by the former prime minister, who retains significant influence over the parliamentary majority. That accusation hangs over the reform like a stain. The proposal was framed as constitutional change, but the opposition reads it as a settling of scores inside the ruling camp.
What Sonko Called Order
Sonko welcomed the decision by the council, saying it is binding. “This cycle reminds us that in a democracy, when institutions play their role, each within its sphere of influence, no crisis can arise,” he said.
That line says plenty about the faith rulers place in institutions when those institutions happen to serve their interests. The council’s ruling gave Sonko a result he could praise, and he wrapped it in the language of democratic order. But the whole episode began with a challenge over legality, moved through an emergency review, and ended with a top body deciding which version of reform could live and which one had to die.
The public gets the spectacle. The factions get the power. And the constitutional language gets used like a shield, a weapon, and a bargaining chip, all at once.