A group condemning the repression under former President Macky Sall’s rule in Senegal has spoken out against his arrival in Dakar on Friday to meet the Senegalese Head of State, as part of his campaign to lead the United Nations.
Former Senegalese President Macky Sall returned to Senegal to meet his successor Bassirou Diomaye Faye for the first time since leaving power, as he seeks Dakar’s support for his candidacy to become United Nations Secretary-General. The brief visit came after two years of political tensions between the two camps.
The former president is accused by the authorities, who have been in power since April 2024, of having severely cracked down on opposition protests between 2021 and 2024, which left dozens dead across the country.
A Contested Return
Parliamentary majority member Guy Marius Sagna, comments, “this visit is a third assassination, a third act of torture, a third imprisonment for all the victims between 2021 and 2024.”
The Collective of Victims of Macky Sall’s regime urged that his international ambitions should not overshadow demands for accountability over alleged abuses, arrests and violence during his time in power. Families of those killed during the crackdown on protests expressed particular anger at the visit, with many noting that President Faye had promised upon his election that justice and compensation for victims of the 2021 to 2024 protests would be a national priority.
The UN Candidacy Behind the Visit
Macky Sall’s only scheduled engagement in Dakar was a meeting with President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, whom he thanked for receiving him. Burundi had nominated former Senegalese president Macky Sall as a candidate for the United Nations’ top job. The UN secretary-general selection process is already underway as António Guterres’ second term approaches its end on the 31st of December, 2026. The next secretary-general is expected to take office in January 2027 for a five-year term, renewable once by member states.
Sall faces three other official candidates: Argentina’s Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, and Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan, head of the UN trade agency, (UN Conference on Trade and Development) UNCTAD.
A Politically Charged Encounter
The meeting between Sall and Diomaye Faye carries strong political significance after two years of strained relations between the former president and the current leadership. The tensions have been linked to several disputes, including the controversy over alleged hidden debt and the crackdown on supporters of the Pastef movement during Sall’s presidency.
The visit also lands in the middle of Senegal’s own domestic political crisis. Faye fired former prime minister Ousmane Sonko in May, who subsequently won control of the National Assembly through Pastef’s parliamentary majority. That confrontation has reshaped the country’s political landscape and added another layer of complexity to a presidential meeting that was already loaded with history.
For civil society groups and victims’ families, the core argument is simple: Macky Sall’s international ambitions should not be given the legitimacy of a presidential audience before the question of accountability for the lives lost under his administration has been answered. Whether Faye’s decision to receive him signals a pragmatic diplomatic calculation, a genuine reconciliation, or something else entirely is a question Senegalese political observers are debating with no settled consensus.
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