/ 2 April 2000

SENEGAL’S PRESIDENT SWORN IN

EIGHT African leaders and the heir to the Moroccan throne joined 60000 people at the Saturday swearing-in of Senegal’s new president Abdoulaye Wade, ending 40 years of one-party government. Among those scheduled to hear him were the Presidents of Gabon, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Mali, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Mauritania, the Prime Minister of Cape Verde, and the speakers of the national assemblies of Algeria and Canada. Wade, whose career has seen him both dean of the law faculty of Dakar University and several times a political prisoner for his opposition to the Socialists, has campaigned since 1974 for alternate political party rule. He won over 58% of the votes against his predecessor Abdou Diouf, head of the Socialist Party which has ruled Senegal since independence in 1961.