Hybrid Authoritarian
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Population
HRF classifies Senegal as ruled by a hybrid authoritarian regime.
Senegal is a presidential republic. The Head of State, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, was democratically elected in the 2024 elections. The polls ended a three-year political crisis and violent unrest sparked by former President Macky Sall’s legal maneuvers to sideline his main opponents and crack down on dissent, amid efforts to stay in power beyond the two-term constitutional limit. Since taking office, the African Patriots of Senegal for Labor, Ethics and Fraternity (PASTEF) regime has restored some democracy while maintaining some of the previous regimes’ authoritarian practices.
National elections are largely free and fair. Since taking office, the regime has organized one national election, which was free and fair.
Independent media, political leaders, and civil society organizations are seriously and unfairly hindered in their ability to openly criticize or challenge the regime. While Senegal has a vibrant independent press that can report critically on the government, journalists, commentators, activists, and opposition members consistently face detention and criminal charges for criticizing government officials.
The judiciary also fails to serve as a check on the regime in a way that allows it to repress criticism. The regime has exploited the judicial system to harass journalists under the guise of spreading false news and to pursue former members of the previous regime on corruption charges.
National elections are largely free and fair. The regime has thus far refrained from barring main political opponents from elections, significantly manipulating electoral law, or undermining electoral oversight, although it has not taken steps to reform laws passed by the previous regime to skew the electoral playing field in its favor.
The regime has not barred a real, mainstream opposition party or candidate from competing in elections. The Takku Walu Senegal main opposition coalition, led by former President Sall, competed freely in free and fair the November 2024 legislative elections, which resulted in the ruling PASTEF decisively winning three-quarters of the seats in the National Assembly, the largest supermajority by a single party since 1988. This contrasted with the previous regime’s pattern of legally barring main opposition figures from the ballot. For instance, in June 2022, the Sall regime’s Ministry of Interior dismissed the list of top candidates of main opposition leader Ousmane Sonko’s Yewwi Askan Wi coalition as inadmissible to the ballot based on a small, inadvertent technicality. The Constitutional Court later upheld the disqualification. Leading up to the 2019 presidential elections, the Court also barred prominent opposition leaders Khalifa Sall and Karim Wade from the ballot.
The regime has not engaged in significant electoral law manipulation. This contrasts with the previous Sall regime’s pattern of manipulating voter and candidate eligibility criteria in a way that legally disqualified its key political opponents. However, the regime is facing calls to reform the 2023 Electoral Code to scrap three contentious eligibility provisions (Articles 29, 30, and 57) that the Sall regime used to sideline its main political opponents. The Sall regime applied laws barring citizens convicted of certain offenses, such as corruption, from voter rolls and electoral ballots, to legally disqualify several of its top political opponents who had been convicted in politically-charged cases. For example, election oversight institutions and courts sidelined major opposition figures such as Karim Wade, son of former president Abdoulaye Wade, and Khalifa Sall, former mayor of the capital Dakar, from the 2019 presidential election due to convictions on politically-motivated corruption charges.
Although the main opposition Takku Walu Senegal initially accused PASTEF of orchestrating “massive fraud” in the 2024 legislative elections, it ultimately conceded its defeat in a landslide. In the 2021 legislative polls, in which the then-ruling Benno Bokk Yaakaar (BBY) coalition lost its supermajority and recorded a contested, narrower victory, the opposition raised more sustained concerns about ballot box stuffing and the creation of fake and unsigned minutes in several strongholds of former president Sall. Additionally, the regime denied a request from opposition leader Dethié Fall to verify the polling station minutes, thereby preventing him from making observations and potentially filing claims within the legal deadlines.
The regime has not seriously undermined independent electoral oversight. Since taking office, the regime has not taken steps to interfere with the National Autonomous Electoral Commission (CENA). However, the presidency’s expansive constitutional powers in the appointment of electoral commissioners foster disproportionate presidential influence over election oversight. For instance, Senegal’s electoral code gives the executive cabinet ministry of interior the constitutional authority to oversee the preparation and organization of elections and the management of electoral rolls and the voter register. The electoral law gives CENA—whose members are appointed by presidential decree—the authority to supervise and control voter rolls, candidacies, and electoral operations. The previous Sall regime abused its executive power to undermine independent electoral oversight. For example, in November 2023, Sall controversially replaced all 12 CENA commissioners after the agency called for his main political opponent, Sonko, to be reinstated in the ballot for the 2024 presidential elections. Furthermore, two of the appointees had been members of Sall’s APR party.
Independent media, political leaders, and civil society organizations are seriously and unfairly hindered if they openly criticize and challenge the regime. The regime has systematically intimidated journalists, civil society activists, and critics, censored dissenting speech, and blocked protests.
The Faye regime has systematically obstructed, intimidated, and imprisoned journalists in retaliation for critical political commentary or coverage of sensitive topics. From the time the regime took power in March 2024 until the end of 2025, it had subjected at least 24 journalists to various forms of intimidation and obstruction, including police interrogation, detention, or criminal prosecution. For example, in April 2025, police detained Al Jazeera English journalists Nicholas Haque and Magali Rochat as they traveled through the southern Casamance region to cover the return of people displaced by the conflict between the government and the rebels of the Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC). Police forced the journalists to return to the capital, Dakar. In July 2025, in a similar case, police expelled four journalists working for Agence France-Presse who had traveled to Casamance, accusing them of lacking authorization to do their work. In the following months, the regime detained several TV commentators over criticism of Sonko, while the latter urged his supporters to boycott “television stations that fight us.” In October 2025, police raided 7TV and RFM, detaining five journalists and switching the stations off the air, in response to the broadcast of an interview with media owner and Macky Sall ally Madiambal Diagne. In November 2025, police fired tear gas, which hit two journalists as it violently dispersed a peaceful gathering of the Niakhtu National civil society group.
The regime has exerted legal and financial pressure on the private press, in continuity with previous regimes. The executive branch, through the Ministry of Communication, holds oversight authority of the regulation of the media in collaboration with the Broadcast Regulation National Council (CNRA) and the self-regulatory Council for the Respect of Journalism Ethics (CORED). While Senegal has a vibrant and diverse media landscape with 50 weeklies, 150 online news outlets, 300 radio stations, and 35 TV stations, the private press remains financially fragile and dependent on government contracts and financial assistance. In April 2025, Minister of Communication Amadou Sall controversially issued a decree ordering 381 private news outlets to cease operations for non-compliance with regulations, overstepping the authority of CNRA. In June 2025, CORED suspended its activities due to the regime’s non-allocation of press support and development fund.
The regime has also targeted close allies of the previous regime. In September 2025, DSC detained Pape Mahawa Diouf, the deputy spokesperson for the main opposition APR party. He was given a one-month suspended prison sentence for alleging a $66 million corruption scandal at the Senegalese Rural Electrification Agency (ASER) during a television appearance. In July 2025, Moustapha Diakhaté, an opposition figure and chief of staff to the former president, Sall, was sentenced to two months in prison after being convicted of “insulting the head of state” after referring to the country’s leaders as “good-for-nothings.”
The regime has seriously and unfairly censored dissenting speech. The police’s Cybersecurity Special Division (DSC) polices online and offline commentary, and the public prosecutor systematically launches criminal prosecutions, strictly enforcing repressive laws criminalizing speech. For example, in July 2025, DSC detained news commentator Gadiaga Badara over a comment critical of Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko during an exchange with Culture Minister Amadou Ba on Télé Futurs Médias (TFM). Gadiaga was charged with a slew of criminal offenses, including spreading false news, immoral speech, and insulting the head of state, and was remanded to prison. He was released on bail in December 2025 after five months of pre-trial detention. In a similar case in August 2025, Plus.SN TV commentator Doudou Coulibaly was detained and sentenced to a three-month suspended prison term on charges of “insulting a head of state” over on-air criticism of Sonko’s meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The regime has seriously and unfairly repressed protests or gatherings. The Faye regime has not abolished a controversial 2011 ministerial decree banning political protests in the center of Dakar. Although the constitution guarantees freedom of assembly and public gatherings, and protests do not require a permit but just a notice to the local authorities, in practice, officials have carried on a longstanding pattern of blocking protests by citing vague security concerns. For instance, in July 2025, the civil society movement Front for a Popular and Pan-African Anti-Imperialist Revolution (FRAPP) reported that the chief administrative officer of Dakar banned 26 public notices of protests in just one month. The banned protests included one by Togolese nationals seeking to demonstrate against their government’s violent repression of pro-democracy protests. In November 2025, authorities banned a rally of the Niakhtou National civil society group, and police violently dispersed the gathering after organizers defied the ban. While the regime authorized a couple of major dissenting protests by the opposition APR party in June 2025 and the civil society platform Front for the Defense of Democracy and the Republic (FDR) in November 2025, it suppressed unsanctioned demonstrations, such as a student protest at Université Sine-Saloum El Hadji Ibrahima Niass (USSEIN) in December 2025.
Institutions largely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. A powerful executive dominates the institutional architecture and its extensive constitutional powers, along with the regime’s supermajority in the legislature, effectively subordinating the legislative and judicial branches to extensions of the regime in power, negating meaningful checks and balances. As a result, courts systematically enable the regime’s attempts to repress criticism; the regime retaliates against dissenting judges and subjects judicial institutions to reforms that abolish or seriously weaken their independence or operational effectiveness. Judicial, legislative, or executive institutions fail to hold regime officials accountable.
Courts have unfairly failed to check, and enabled, the regime’s attempts to repress criticism or retaliate against those who express open opposition to its most prominent, widely publicized policies. Judges frequently uphold and hand out convictions on politically motivated criminal charges filed by the Public Prosecutor against critics of the regime. For instance, in October, a court sentenced Daba Mbodji, an opposition APR party member and influencer, over criticism of the ruling PASTEF and its leader, to serve a month in prison. However, the courts have also ruled against the regime in high-profile cases. Nevertheless, the courts have also occasionally issued rulings against the regime’s efforts to punish critics or political opponents or violate their due process rights. For instance, in June 2025, the Supreme Court overturned a controversial suspension order issued by the Minister of Communication against the online news outlet, Public SN. In November 2025, the Supreme Court dismissed the regime’s appeal against a lower court’s ruling granting bail to jailed former minister of sports Lat Diop. In October 2025, the High Court of Justice dismissed a PASTEF lawmaker’s petition to impeach former President Sall.
Members of the judicial branch, who rule contrary to regime interests or who are perceived as a threat to the governing authority, have faced systematic retaliation. Under the constitution, the President and the Minister of Justice chair the judicial oversight institution, the Governing Council of the Judiciary (CSM). Both hold preeminence in the process of judicial appointments for all courts. Since taking office, Faye has made a sweeping overhaul to the composition of the top courts, including the Supreme Court. Upon taking power, the Faye regime proceeded to demote judges who had previously handled political cases against PASTEF. For example, magistrates of the High Court of Dakar, who had handled criminal cases against Sonko, were transferred to lower courts or administrative duties within the Ministry of Justice. One example was former Public Prosecutor Abdou Karim Diop and the investigating Mamadou Seck were demoted to Advocate General at the Court of Appeal of Tambacounda, in the remote southeast region of Senegal.
Judicial, legislative, or executive institutions have systematically, frequently, and unfairly failed to hold regime officials accountable. The regime reconstituted the High Court of Justice – a special tribunal of the National Assembly with the authority to try the President for high treason and executive cabinet members in cases of conspiracy to undermine state security. However, the regime has brought before the Court only former ministers of the previous regime accused of corruption.
The regime has systematically subjected judicial institutions to reforms that abolish or seriously weaken their independence or operational effectiveness. For example, the regime created the Financial Judicial Panel to replace the Court for the Suppression of Illicit Enrichment (Crei), filling it with 27 judges who report to the Public Prosecutor.
HRF classifies Senegal as ruled by a hybrid authoritarian regime.
Senegal is a presidential republic. The Head of State, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, was democratically elected in the 2024 elections. The polls ended a three-year political crisis and violent unrest sparked by former President Macky Sall’s legal maneuvers to sideline his main opponents and crack down on dissent, amid efforts to stay in power beyond the two-term constitutional limit. Since taking office, the African Patriots of Senegal for Labor, Ethics and Fraternity (PASTEF) regime has restored some democracy while maintaining some of the previous regimes’ authoritarian practices.
National elections are largely free and fair. Since taking office, the regime has organized one national election, which was free and fair.
Independent media, political leaders, and civil society organizations are seriously and unfairly hindered in their ability to openly criticize or challenge the regime. While Senegal has a vibrant independent press that can report critically on the government, journalists, commentators, activists, and opposition members consistently face detention and criminal charges for criticizing government officials.
The judiciary also fails to serve as a check on the regime in a way that allows it to repress criticism. The regime has exploited the judicial system to harass journalists under the guise of spreading false news and to pursue former members of the previous regime on corruption charges.
National elections are largely free and fair. The regime has thus far refrained from barring main political opponents from elections, significantly manipulating electoral law, or undermining electoral oversight, although it has not taken steps to reform laws passed by the previous regime to skew the electoral playing field in its favor.
The regime has not barred a real, mainstream opposition party or candidate from competing in elections. The Takku Walu Senegal main opposition coalition, led by former President Sall, competed freely in free and fair the November 2024 legislative elections, which resulted in the ruling PASTEF decisively winning three-quarters of the seats in the National Assembly, the largest supermajority by a single party since 1988. This contrasted with the previous regime’s pattern of legally barring main opposition figures from the ballot. For instance, in June 2022, the Sall regime’s Ministry of Interior dismissed the list of top candidates of main opposition leader Ousmane Sonko’s Yewwi Askan Wi coalition as inadmissible to the ballot based on a small, inadvertent technicality. The Constitutional Court later upheld the disqualification. Leading up to the 2019 presidential elections, the Court also barred prominent opposition leaders Khalifa Sall and Karim Wade from the ballot.
The regime has not engaged in significant electoral law manipulation. This contrasts with the previous Sall regime’s pattern of manipulating voter and candidate eligibility criteria in a way that legally disqualified its key political opponents. However, the regime is facing calls to reform the 2023 Electoral Code to scrap three contentious eligibility provisions (Articles 29, 30, and 57) that the Sall regime used to sideline its main political opponents. The Sall regime applied laws barring citizens convicted of certain offenses, such as corruption, from voter rolls and electoral ballots, to legally disqualify several of its top political opponents who had been convicted in politically-charged cases. For example, election oversight institutions and courts sidelined major opposition figures such as Karim Wade, son of former president Abdoulaye Wade, and Khalifa Sall, former mayor of the capital Dakar, from the 2019 presidential election due to convictions on politically-motivated corruption charges.
Although the main opposition Takku Walu Senegal initially accused PASTEF of orchestrating “massive fraud” in the 2024 legislative elections, it ultimately conceded its defeat in a landslide. In the 2021 legislative polls, in which the then-ruling Benno Bokk Yaakaar (BBY) coalition lost its supermajority and recorded a contested, narrower victory, the opposition raised more sustained concerns about ballot box stuffing and the creation of fake and unsigned minutes in several strongholds of former president Sall. Additionally, the regime denied a request from opposition leader Dethié Fall to verify the polling station minutes, thereby preventing him from making observations and potentially filing claims within the legal deadlines.
The regime has not seriously undermined independent electoral oversight. Since taking office, the regime has not taken steps to interfere with the National Autonomous Electoral Commission (CENA). However, the presidency’s expansive constitutional powers in the appointment of electoral commissioners foster disproportionate presidential influence over election oversight. For instance, Senegal’s electoral code gives the executive cabinet ministry of interior the constitutional authority to oversee the preparation and organization of elections and the management of electoral rolls and the voter register. The electoral law gives CENA—whose members are appointed by presidential decree—the authority to supervise and control voter rolls, candidacies, and electoral operations. The previous Sall regime abused its executive power to undermine independent electoral oversight. For example, in November 2023, Sall controversially replaced all 12 CENA commissioners after the agency called for his main political opponent, Sonko, to be reinstated in the ballot for the 2024 presidential elections. Furthermore, two of the appointees had been members of Sall’s APR party.
Independent media, political leaders, and civil society organizations are seriously and unfairly hindered if they openly criticize and challenge the regime. The regime has systematically intimidated journalists, civil society activists, and critics, censored dissenting speech, and blocked protests.
The Faye regime has systematically obstructed, intimidated, and imprisoned journalists in retaliation for critical political commentary or coverage of sensitive topics. From the time the regime took power in March 2024 until the end of 2025, it had subjected at least 24 journalists to various forms of intimidation and obstruction, including police interrogation, detention, or criminal prosecution. For example, in April 2025, police detained Al Jazeera English journalists Nicholas Haque and Magali Rochat as they traveled through the southern Casamance region to cover the return of people displaced by the conflict between the government and the rebels of the Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC). Police forced the journalists to return to the capital, Dakar. In July 2025, in a similar case, police expelled four journalists working for Agence France-Presse who had traveled to Casamance, accusing them of lacking authorization to do their work. In the following months, the regime detained several TV commentators over criticism of Sonko, while the latter urged his supporters to boycott “television stations that fight us.” In October 2025, police raided 7TV and RFM, detaining five journalists and switching the stations off the air, in response to the broadcast of an interview with media owner and Macky Sall ally Madiambal Diagne. In November 2025, police fired tear gas, which hit two journalists as it violently dispersed a peaceful gathering of the Niakhtu National civil society group.
The regime has exerted legal and financial pressure on the private press, in continuity with previous regimes. The executive branch, through the Ministry of Communication, holds oversight authority of the regulation of the media in collaboration with the Broadcast Regulation National Council (CNRA) and the self-regulatory Council for the Respect of Journalism Ethics (CORED). While Senegal has a vibrant and diverse media landscape with 50 weeklies, 150 online news outlets, 300 radio stations, and 35 TV stations, the private press remains financially fragile and dependent on government contracts and financial assistance. In April 2025, Minister of Communication Amadou Sall controversially issued a decree ordering 381 private news outlets to cease operations for non-compliance with regulations, overstepping the authority of CNRA. In June 2025, CORED suspended its activities due to the regime’s non-allocation of press support and development fund.
The regime has also targeted close allies of the previous regime. In September 2025, DSC detained Pape Mahawa Diouf, the deputy spokesperson for the main opposition APR party. He was given a one-month suspended prison sentence for alleging a $66 million corruption scandal at the Senegalese Rural Electrification Agency (ASER) during a television appearance. In July 2025, Moustapha Diakhaté, an opposition figure and chief of staff to the former president, Sall, was sentenced to two months in prison after being convicted of “insulting the head of state” after referring to the country’s leaders as “good-for-nothings.”
The regime has seriously and unfairly censored dissenting speech. The police’s Cybersecurity Special Division (DSC) polices online and offline commentary, and the public prosecutor systematically launches criminal prosecutions, strictly enforcing repressive laws criminalizing speech. For example, in July 2025, DSC detained news commentator Gadiaga Badara over a comment critical of Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko during an exchange with Culture Minister Amadou Ba on Télé Futurs Médias (TFM). Gadiaga was charged with a slew of criminal offenses, including spreading false news, immoral speech, and insulting the head of state, and was remanded to prison. He was released on bail in December 2025 after five months of pre-trial detention. In a similar case in August 2025, Plus.SN TV commentator Doudou Coulibaly was detained and sentenced to a three-month suspended prison term on charges of “insulting a head of state” over on-air criticism of Sonko’s meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The regime has seriously and unfairly repressed protests or gatherings. The Faye regime has not abolished a controversial 2011 ministerial decree banning political protests in the center of Dakar. Although the constitution guarantees freedom of assembly and public gatherings, and protests do not require a permit but just a notice to the local authorities, in practice, officials have carried on a longstanding pattern of blocking protests by citing vague security concerns. For instance, in July 2025, the civil society movement Front for a Popular and Pan-African Anti-Imperialist Revolution (FRAPP) reported that the chief administrative officer of Dakar banned 26 public notices of protests in just one month. The banned protests included one by Togolese nationals seeking to demonstrate against their government’s violent repression of pro-democracy protests. In November 2025, authorities banned a rally of the Niakhtou National civil society group, and police violently dispersed the gathering after organizers defied the ban. While the regime authorized a couple of major dissenting protests by the opposition APR party in June 2025 and the civil society platform Front for the Defense of Democracy and the Republic (FDR) in November 2025, it suppressed unsanctioned demonstrations, such as a student protest at Université Sine-Saloum El Hadji Ibrahima Niass (USSEIN) in December 2025.
Institutions largely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. A powerful executive dominates the institutional architecture and its extensive constitutional powers, along with the regime’s supermajority in the legislature, effectively subordinating the legislative and judicial branches to extensions of the regime in power, negating meaningful checks and balances. As a result, courts systematically enable the regime’s attempts to repress criticism; the regime retaliates against dissenting judges and subjects judicial institutions to reforms that abolish or seriously weaken their independence or operational effectiveness. Judicial, legislative, or executive institutions fail to hold regime officials accountable.
Courts have unfairly failed to check, and enabled, the regime’s attempts to repress criticism or retaliate against those who express open opposition to its most prominent, widely publicized policies. Judges frequently uphold and hand out convictions on politically motivated criminal charges filed by the Public Prosecutor against critics of the regime. For instance, in October, a court sentenced Daba Mbodji, an opposition APR party member and influencer, over criticism of the ruling PASTEF and its leader, to serve a month in prison. However, the courts have also ruled against the regime in high-profile cases. Nevertheless, the courts have also occasionally issued rulings against the regime’s efforts to punish critics or political opponents or violate their due process rights. For instance, in June 2025, the Supreme Court overturned a controversial suspension order issued by the Minister of Communication against the online news outlet, Public SN. In November 2025, the Supreme Court dismissed the regime’s appeal against a lower court’s ruling granting bail to jailed former minister of sports Lat Diop. In October 2025, the High Court of Justice dismissed a PASTEF lawmaker’s petition to impeach former President Sall.
Members of the judicial branch, who rule contrary to regime interests or who are perceived as a threat to the governing authority, have faced systematic retaliation. Under the constitution, the President and the Minister of Justice chair the judicial oversight institution, the Governing Council of the Judiciary (CSM). Both hold preeminence in the process of judicial appointments for all courts. Since taking office, Faye has made a sweeping overhaul to the composition of the top courts, including the Supreme Court. Upon taking power, the Faye regime proceeded to demote judges who had previously handled political cases against PASTEF. For example, magistrates of the High Court of Dakar, who had handled criminal cases against Sonko, were transferred to lower courts or administrative duties within the Ministry of Justice. One example was former Public Prosecutor Abdou Karim Diop and the investigating Mamadou Seck were demoted to Advocate General at the Court of Appeal of Tambacounda, in the remote southeast region of Senegal.
Judicial, legislative, or executive institutions have systematically, frequently, and unfairly failed to hold regime officials accountable. The regime reconstituted the High Court of Justice – a special tribunal of the National Assembly with the authority to try the President for high treason and executive cabinet members in cases of conspiracy to undermine state security. However, the regime has brought before the Court only former ministers of the previous regime accused of corruption.
The regime has systematically subjected judicial institutions to reforms that abolish or seriously weaken their independence or operational effectiveness. For example, the regime created the Financial Judicial Panel to replace the Court for the Suppression of Illicit Enrichment (Crei), filling it with 27 judges who report to the Public Prosecutor.
