Senegal's Pastef leaders in power struggle as Sonko moves to parliament
Nine months after entering office together, President Diomaye Faye and ex-PM Ousmane Sonko are locked in a political confrontation that has shifted the balance of power in Senegal.
Senegal faces an unprecedented crisis at the highest levels of government, with President Bassirou Diomaye Faye and Ousmane Sonko—his former Prime Minister now leading the National Assembly—in an open power struggle that analysts say tests the country's democratic institutions.
The two men rode the Pastef party (Patriotes africains du Sénégal pour le travail, l'éthique et la fraternité) to power together in March 2024 on a promise of rupture with the past. Eight months later, Faye removed Sonko from the Prime Minister's office. Sonko returned to the National Assembly and was elected its president, a move that reconfigures the traditional power structure Senegal has known since independence.
A new kind of divided power
The immediate crisis reveals fault lines in how Senegal's presidential system distributes authority. Traditionally, since 1963, the party that controlled the presidency also held a legislative majority, concentrating power in the executive. Today, that is no longer the case.
According to Abdou Fattah Niane, a political scientist who analysed the conflict for The Conversation, the situation now constitutes what analysts call "cohabitation"—a division of power at the top between a president with substantial constitutional prerogatives and a parliamentary leader with the party's backing and control of the legislature.
"The Diomaye-Sonko crisis reveals difficulties linked to the exercise of power," Niane said, describing it as a test of whether Senegal's political system can adapt to real power-sharing at its apex.
Rupture or pattern?
Scholars differ on whether this moment marks a break from Senegal's past or part of a longer tradition. Niane characterised it as a rupture: since 1960, he noted, only one previous crisis at this level posed a genuine threat to the system.
However, the reporting does not provide clarity on the nature or resolution of earlier presidential-prime ministerial conflicts, making it difficult to fully assess how novel this situation truly is. Sources also do not detail the specific constitutional powers each leader now possesses or the mechanisms available to resolve the standoff.
What happens next
The outcome remains uncertain. Niane suggested that restraint in the exercise of power may be key to preserving political stability. The real test, he argued, is whether Senegal's system can accommodate a genuine division of power at the executive and legislative levels, or whether it will trend back toward concentration of authority in the presidency.
The crisis is unfolding in real time, and further developments are likely. For now, both Faye and Sonko remain backed by the same party and majority, a factor that both constrains and complicates their rivalry.