Abdoulaye Wade
Abdoulaye Wade was president of Senegal from 2000 to 2012, elected at seventy-three on his fifth attempt after twenty-six years as the opposition to Senghor and Diouf, in the first change of party by ballot the country had had, and defeated at eighty-five when he tried for a third term the constitution he had written did not allow, after a year of protests and a run-off in which every candidate he had beaten in the first round backed the man who beat him. In between he built the roads, the airport and the monument, the fifty-metre bronze of a family striding out of a hill above Dakar that cost twenty-seven million dollars and whose copyright he claimed for himself, and tried to make his son Karim his successor, which is what finished him. He was born in Kebemer in 1926, took doctorates in law and economics in France, taught at Dakar, and founded the Democratic Party in 1974 when Senghor let a single opposition party exist. He ran against Senghor in 1978 and against Diouf in 1983, 1988 and 1993, was jailed after the 1988 election and after the assassination of a constitutional judge in 1993, and served in Diouf's government twice in between. Sopi, change, was his slogan for a generation, and in March 2000 the young of Dakar voted him in with fifty-eight per cent in the run-off, and Diouf conceded by telephone that night. The constitution of 2001 shortened the term to five years and limited it to two. He built: the Dakar-Diamniadio motorway, the new airport, the universities, the Great Mosque, and the Monument of African Renaissance, built by North Koreans and inaugurated in 2010 with a speech by the president of Senegal about his own genius. He was reelected in 2007 with fifty-six per cent, and then had the term lengthened back to seven years, made his son minister of everything, and in 2011 tried to lower the threshold for winning in the first round to a quarter of the vote, which brought the crowds and the June 23 Movement into the streets. The constitutional council let him stand in 2012 on the argument that his first term predated the limit, and Macky Sall beat him in the second round by two to one. He conceded, went to Versailles, and came back to run his party from abroad. His son was convicted of illicit enrichment in 2015 and pardoned.
- Lived: 1926 CE – ?
- Nationality: Senegalese
- Roles: president, politician, lawyer
