« Honte à ceux qui célèbrent » : Le gros coup de gueule de Thierno Bocoum après la décision du Conseil constitutionnel
The Constitutional Council's decision to declare itself incompetent in the appeal for the integration of Ousmane Sonko into the National Assembly continues to provoke reactions in the Senegalese political class.
In an opinion piece entitled "Constitutional Council Decision: Shame on those who celebrate an imaginary victory", the president of the AGIR-Les Leaders movement strongly criticized the celebrations that followed the decision of the high court.
For Thierno Bocoum, it is a real shame to celebrate the fact that a fundamental constitutional question has not been examined on its merits. "A ruling of incompetence simply means that the court seized considers that the dispute falls outside its jurisdiction. It in no way constitutes validation of the contested act," he stated.
"The real shame is to transform a decision of incompetence into a supposed consecration of legality," he added.
The former MP believes it is unfair not to commend the initiative of the eighteen MPs who decided to bring this matter before the Constitutional Council. "Faced with an unprecedented institutional situation, they refused to give in and chose the legal path. In a democracy, this approach deserves respect," he insisted, emphasizing that the decision rendered "was unfortunately not at all unpredictable."
The leader of the AGIR-Les Leaders movement recalled having warned, in a contribution dated May 27, 2026, about "the procedural risk facing the plaintiffs." "I specified that the appeal that the opposition members of parliament were to file should not be an appeal to annul an internal parliamentary act. The warning was explicit," he wrote. However, according to him, the appeal "aimed to declare unconstitutional the decision of May 24, 2026, by which the Bureau of the National Assembly reinstated Mr. Ousmane Sonko. As a result, there was a significant risk that the debate would shift to a question of jurisdiction rather than to this fundamental constitutional issue." "That is precisely what happened," he stated.
However, another approach was conceivable, indicating that he had proposed "to frame the appeal around the preliminary question of the constitutional validity of the parliamentary mandate itself rather than solely around the decision of the Bureau of the National Assembly. Such an approach would have invited the Council to rule in light of its own jurisprudence of February 15, 2024, in which it affirmed that it had full jurisdiction in electoral matters to hear cases concerning acts directly contributing to the regularity of a national election," the former parliamentarian argued.
"Since the parliamentary mandate in question itself stems from a national election, the question deserved to be asked," the former parliamentarian continued.
In any case, he said, the Constitutional Council's declaration of incompetence cannot be interpreted as validating what happened in the National Assembly. "An irregularity does not disappear simply because a judge deems themselves incompetent to hear the case," he concluded.
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