Senegal to scrap Senate to save
money Senegalese President Macky Sall presented
plans on Thursday to scrap the country’s
upper house of parliament to raise funds
needed to fight annual flooding which killed
six and left several neighbourhoods under
water last weekend. Mr Sall, who won March elections on a ticket to
cut excessive spending on state institutions,
said the abolition of the 100-seat Senate would
free up eight billion CFA francs a year for
urgently needed infrastructure improvements. The measure is likely to be welcomed in poor
suburbs of the capital Dakar which suffer
flooding every rainy season because of
shoddy urban planning. It will be discussed in
cabinet on Thursday and is set to be voted in
the lower house within weeks. “I am insisting more than ever on what I have
called the new order of priority: the primacy of
the nation over political parties and the
reduction of government spending for the
benefit of the population,” said Mr Sall, who
earlier this week cut short a private visit to South Africa because of the flooding. “That is why in this spirit, I have decided to
submit as a matter of urgency, a constitutional
amendment bill aimed at abolishing the
Senate,” he said. Senatorial elections were expected in the
coming weeks. The measure would be the second time the
Senegalese Senate was abolished since its
creation in 1999. Mr Sall’s predecessor
Abdoulaye Wade abolished it in 2001 to save
money but later reinstituted it in 2007. In common with many former French colonies,
Senegal has a presidential system modelled
closely on France’s. Political commentators
complain that the Senate, with over half if its
members appointed by the president, has
tended to be used mostly as a reward for political favours.

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nigeria should follow suit, because they are even more useless than their senegalese counterparts