Youssou Ndour On The Campaign Trail

Grammy-award winning Senegalese musician Youssou Ndour, who previously announced that he would be on the presidential election ballot before being thwarted by the constitutional court which claimed he lacked signatures to support his candidacy, is campaigning on behalf of presidential challenger Macky Sall.

In order to block a highly controversial third term bid by Abdoulaye Wade, the 85 year old incumbent, superstar Youssou Ndour along with the assistance of an additional 12 presidential candidates, who fell out of the electoral race, are rallying behind Sall.

After conjuring a crowd of thousands in the volatile province of Casamance, Ndour repeated the phrase “We have won” in his beautiful voice while his song “Alalu Mbolo” was broadcast clearly through the sound system. Ndour went onto say:

“We are holding an electoral show. In one week [Abdoulaye] Wade will leave power.”

Reminiscent of some of the individuals within the Occupy Wall Street movement, a woman in attendance of Ndour’s pro-Sall rally, Sophie Diedhou, was quoted by the AFP saying:

“I want Wade to leave, we have no hope of finding a job, I am a domestic worker despite being trained as a seamstress.”

Sall polled 26.5% in the first round compared to Wade’s 34.8%, however, Wade was unable to accomplish a first round victor and was forced into a run-off as all of the runners-up accumulatively had 60% of the votes in the first round. All of the first round drops are supporting the challenger, Sall, as he goes up against incumbent Wade.

Macky Sall is considered the favorite to win while Wade’s popularity on the other hand has dropped like a rock amidst power outages and an escalation in the cost of food. Both problems appear to have mysteriously (or perhaps not so mysteriously) disappeared around the time of the presidential election campaign. To add insult to injury and further provoke the already discontent masses, Wade is believed to have put forth effort into ensuring that his son Karim succeeds him as president of Senegal.

What are your thoughts on all of this?

Video of Youssou Ndour on stage at the 2012 Senegal presidential election rally with his song “Alalu Mbolo” playing in the background: