Senegal’s president backs his predecessor’s bid to lead the United Nations, months after accusing his administration of financial mismanagement.
Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye has thrown his support behind former President Macky Sall’s campaign to become the next United Nations secretary-general, the foreign ministry said on Monday. The endorsement hands Sall crucial backing from his own country, despite a rift between the two men that has defined Senegalese politics for the past two years.
Faye made the decision after meeting with Sall on Friday, according to the ministry statement. He instructed his government to “fully mobilize” behind the bid, saying Sall’s campaign “is now Senegal’s candidacy in the service of Africa.”
A rivalry that has run for two years
Sall governed Senegal from 2012 to 2024. His attempt to postpone that year’s presidential election set off deadly street protests before Senegal’s Constitutional Council struck the move down. Faye went on to win the election and took office in April 2024, but relations between the two men stayed tense well after the handover. Faye’s government has accused Sall’s administration of financial mismanagement and political repression, charges Sall denies.
That mismanagement claim has since taken a specific shape. Senegal’s Court of Auditors found that Sall’s government had hidden roughly $7 billion in borrowing, a figure S&P Global later put closer to $13 billion. The gap between Senegal’s reported and actual debt load became one of the defining controversies of Faye’s first year in office, and a recurring point of friction between the current government and its predecessor.
Given that history, Monday’s endorsement marks a reversal. Sall had traveled to Dakar himself just days earlier, arriving on July 14 for his first public visit to Senegal since leaving office, specifically to seek Faye’s backing for the UN bid. Senegal had withheld that backing until Monday.
A crowded and contested field
Sall is one of several candidates seeking to replace UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, whose second term ends on December 31. Guterres has held the post since January 1, 2017. The Security Council will recommend his successor for a five-year term beginning January 1, 2027.
Sall’s path into the race has been unusual from the start. Burundi’s UN mission notified the presidents of the General Assembly and Security Council of Sall’s nomination on March 2, submitted by President Evariste Ndayishimiye in his capacity as African Union chair, which some observers initially read as continent-wide backing. That reading did not hold. The African Union declined to formally endorse Sall’s candidacy on March 27, and his name never appeared on the agenda of the AU summit held in Addis Ababa that February. Analysts have since pointed out that Burundi’s nomination letter, while gesturing toward continental support, was legally submitted as Burundi’s own nomination rather than an AU nomination. Rwanda went further, calling the process used to advance Sall “a gross breach of AU rules and regulations.”
Sall now competes against a field weighted toward Latin America. Five of six declared candidates come from South or Central America, including Michelle Bachelet Jeria, Rebeca Grynspan Mayufis, Rafael Mariano Grossi and Maria Fernanda Espinosa. Bachelet and Grossi in particular have emerged as his most direct competition, in a selection process where the five permanent Security Council members hold veto power over whoever ultimately gets recommended to the General Assembly.
Sall has also worked to build ties in Washington. In a June interview, he told Breitbart News he supports Trump’s push to overhaul the UN, describing Trump as “a peace builder” and voicing support for what Trump’s team has branded an effort to “Make the UN Great Again.” He made those comments ahead of a trip to Washington as part of his campaign.
Domestic politics collide with a global campaign
For Faye, the endorsement carries risk as well as opportunity. His government came to power partly on promises to hold Sall’s administration accountable for the hidden debt and for what Faye’s camp has called political repression during Sall’s final years in office. Publicly channeling state support into Sall’s UN campaign, even while those accusations remain unresolved, exposes Faye to criticism at home that he is prioritizing Senegal’s international standing over domestic accountability.
Sall’s own credibility problem extends beyond the debt scandal. Critics in Senegal have also raised questions about his record on press freedom and the treatment of political opponents during his 12 years in power, questions that resurfaced as soon as his UN candidacy became public in March.
Framing Sall’s bid as a national project rather than a personal one appears to be part of Faye’s strategy for managing that domestic tension. By describing the candidacy as being “in the service of Africa,” Faye positioned his government’s support as a continental gesture rather than a personal favor to a man his own administration has spent nearly two years investigating.
Whether that framing holds may depend on how the broader selection process unfolds in the coming months. The formal election is expected to take place at the UN General Assembly session in September, giving Sall a matter of weeks to convert Senegal’s endorsement, and whatever residual AU goodwill exists, into the kind of broad support needed to win over the Security Council’s permanent members.
For now, Faye’s statement gives Sall something he did not have a week ago: an unambiguous public declaration from his home government, delivered by the man who defeated him.
