ZCZC
BFF-01
SENEGAL-POLITICS-DANSOKHO
Veteran Senegalese opposition leader Amath Dansokho dead at 82
DAKAR, Aug 24, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Veteran Senegalese opposition figure and
former minister Amath Dansokho, a major presence in Senegal’s politics for
more than 60 years, has died in Dakar aged 82, according to his associates.
Local media said Dansokho, a former leader of the opposition Party of
Independence and Labour and an ally of President Macky Sall, died Friday
following an illness.
In a statement Sall called Dansokho “a great warrior for liberty,
democracy and the progress of peoples.”
Born in Kedougou in southeast Senegal in 1937, Dansokho was a member of
the African Independence Party, the first Communist outfit in French-ruled
west Africa, before leaving to form the Party of Independence and Labour.
An opposition figure under presidents Leopold Sedar Senghor, Abdou Diouf
and Abdoulaye Wade, he was jailed numerous times and spent many years in
exile elsewhere in Africa and in the then Eastern Bloc.
Dansokho, who served as mayor of Kedougou and was a deputy in the national
assembly was made a minister under Wade, but then fired after he criticised
the running of the government.
“A baobab has fallen, a man who fought every battle for democracy and
fundamental liberties,” human rights activist Alioune Tine wrote on Twitter,
referencing the mighty tree which is a national symbol.
BSS/AFP/SSS/0855 hrs