BRIDGE training on the Gorée Island for members of the Senegalese Electoral Commission

For the past 20 years, Senegal has been a beacon of democracy in the West Africa sub region. Although the country has a long history of well-run elections, the presidential elections scheduled to take place on February 26, 2012 will be decisive in the future stability of Senegal. Mr. Wade is currently at the end of his second term as President of the Republic of Senegal but wishes to run for a third term despite the constitutional and popular impediments.

It is within the framework of a 15-month USAID-funded electoral assistance program named “Programme Gouvernance & Paix au Sénégal – PGP”, that the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), in close partnership with The Gorée Institute, organized this workshop – from December 7 to 11, 2011 – in which 20 members of the Senegalese National Autonomous Electoral Commission (CENA) took part. This is the first of a series of 6 trainings among which 5 will be given to the local representations of the CENA in Thiès, Saint-Louis, Kaolack, Ziguinchor and Tambacounda throughout the month of December 2011.

Some of the sessions facilitated during the workshop touched on:

• EMBs types & principles;
• Electoral integrity for EMBs and their auxiliaries;
• Introduction to electoral systems;
• Management of electoral conflict;
• Introduction to electoral observation;
• Voter registration;
• Boundary delimitation, standards and principles;
• In-country and out-of-country voting;
• Security around the electoral process.

Facilitators to the training were:

• Ibrahima Amadou Niang, BRIDGE Expert Facilitator
• Kamissa Camara, BRIDGE Accrediting Facilitator
• Amadou Ciré Sall, BRIDGE Workshop Facilitator
• Doudou Dia, BRIDGE semi-accredited Facilitator

The training topics listed above were nicely adapted to the Senegalese context by targeted presentations from long-standing members of the CENA and administrators from the recently created Ministry of the Elections. At the end of the training, 98% of the participants rated the workshop as being “extremely useful” to the conduct of their daily responsibilities in the particularly challenging electoral process they are currently facing.

At the end of the training, Mr. Doudou Dia received his full accreditation as BRIDGE facilitator.