Abdoulaye Wade

Abdoulaye Wade (born 29 May 1926) is a French then Senegalese politician who was President of Senegal from 2000 to 2012.

Wade was born in Kébémer, Senegal, on 29 May 1926; officially, he was born in 1926, although some claim he was born several years earlier, and the record-keeping of the time is not considered particularly reliable.

He studied and taught law at the Lycée Condorcet in France.

He holds two doctorates in law and economics.

He was also dean of the law and economics faculty at the University of Dakar in Senegal.

He is also the Secretary-General of the Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS), having led the party since it was founded in 1974.

At a summit of the Organization of African Unity in Mogadishu in 1974, Wade told President Léopold Sédar Senghor that he wanted to start a new party, and Senghor agreed to this.

The PDS was founded on 31 July 1974.

The party—initially intended as a Labour party—adopted liberalism in 1976 due to the introduction of a law permitting the existence of only three parties with three distinct ideologies, two of which were taken by other parties (liberalism was therefore the only remaining option).

A long-time opposition leader, he ran for President four times, beginning in 1978, before he was elected in 2000.

Wade first ran for President in February 1978 against Senghor, taking 17.38% of the vote.

Senghor gave Wade the nickname "Diombor" (Wolof for hare).

Also in 1978, Wade was elected to the National Assembly, where he served until 1980.

Wade attracted international attention in the wake of Senghor's announcement in late 1980 that he would resign; as the Secretary General of the PDS, he issued a statement denouncing the process and calling instead for the army to oversee a new set of elections.

Subsequently he ran in the presidential elections of 1983 and 1988, taking second place each time, behind Senghor's successor Abdou Diouf.

Following the 1988 election, he was arrested due to protests against the results and received a suspended sentence.

Subsequently he went to France, but returned in 1990.

In April 1991, Wade and four other PDS members joined a national unity government together with the ruling Socialist Party (PS); Wade became Minister of State without portfolio.

In October 1992, he and the other PDS ministers quit the government due to complaints about the manner in which the PS was said to control the government.

In the February 1993 presidential election, Wade again took second place, with 32% of the vote, behind Diouf, who won with 58%.

Following the May 1993 killing of Constitutional Council Vice-President Babacar Sèye, Wade, along with other PDS leaders, faced police questioning.

On October 1, Wade, his wife, and two PDS members of the National Assembly (Abdoulaye Faye and Ousmane Ngom), were charged with complicity in the murder, although they were not held in custody or put on trial.

Following riots in February 1994, Wade was arrested along with many others for allegedly threatening state security.

The charge of complicity in Sèye's murder was dismissed in May 1994, and Wade and his co-defendants began a hunger strike on June 30.

He and his co-defendants were released on July 4, and the remaining charges were dismissed on 30 August 1994.

Wade rejoined the government as Minister of State in March 1995, but he and the other PDS ministers left again in March 1998.

Although he was elected to the National Assembly in the February 1998 parliamentary election, he announced his resignation from the National Assembly in late July 1998, saying that there were "enough deputies to do the job in my place".

Wade subsequently spent a year in France, returning to Senegal on 27 October 1999.

In the first round of the 2000 presidential election, held on February 27, he again took second place, receiving 31% of the vote, but for the first time, Diouf did not win a first round majority, and consequently a second round was held on March 19.

Wade won this round with 58.49% of the vote, having received the support of candidates from the first round, including third place candidate Moustapha Niasse.

Wade became President on 1 April 2000 and appointed Niasse as his Prime Minister shortly afterwards.

Wade initially cohabited with the PS, which held a majority in the legislature until the PDS and its allies (the Sopi Coalition) won a majority in the April 2001 parliamentary election.

A new constitution was adopted in 2001, reducing presidential terms to five years following the completion of Wade's seven-year term in 2007.

In September 2002, Wade received World Peace Culture Award.

Then in December 2004, Wade signed a peace accord with rebels in Casamance after 22 years of war with rebels.

One of Wade's opponents in this election was his former prime minister Idrissa Seck, who was once considered Wade's protégé, but was arrested in 2005.

On 15 October 2006, Wade was nominated as presidential candidate of the PDS for the February 2007 presidential election.

He won re-election in 2007 with a majority in the first round, but in 2012 he was defeated in a controversial bid for a third term.

Final results released on 11 March 2007, showed Wade winning in the first round with 55.9% of the vote, far ahead of his nearest opponents, Seck with about 15% and Socialist Party leader Ousmane Tanor Dieng with about 13.6%.

Dieng and another opposition candidate, Abdoulaye Bathily, filed appeals regarding the election, but these were rejected by the Constitutional Council.