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TEHRAN, Feb 19 - President Macky Sall is the strong favorite to win Senegal's election on Sunday, boosted by a modernizing first term that propelled economic growth although critics accuse him of jailing his rivals for political gain.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - Sall, 57, is facing only four contenders in the first round of voting - the smallest presidential field since 1988 - after two of Senegal's best-known opposition figures were ruled out because of corruption convictions.
Rights groups say this represents a crackdown on dissent in a country long seen as West Africa's most stable democracy, which has seen peaceful transitions of power via the ballot box since independence from France in 1960.
But many voters and foreign backers applaud Sall for boosting economic growth to over six percent, one of the highest rates in Africa last year.
The growth was driven in part by a series of infrastructure projects including a new airport, 221 km (137 miles) of multi-lane motorways, a wrestling stadium and an express train that will connect the capital to a new city that has begun to rise from the semi-desert outside Dakar.
Billboards of Sall in a suit dot Dakar's main coastal road and tout his achievements as the "Builder of Modern Senegal".
"We are happy," said fisherman Diabel Mbeguere, pulling his brightly-painted wooden boat onto Dakar's Yoff beach after a day at sea. "There are highways here now, many things the president has done."
"Electricity used to be a big problem," he added.
Long power cuts that used to blight urban Senegal are rarer under Sall. Thousands of villages have gained access to electricity for the first time too, although more than half remain without power, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Source: Reuters
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