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44- year – old Diomaye Faye has been elected as the next president of West African Country, Senegal.
Faye joined other contestant one week after after he was released from prison along with his firebrand mentor Ousmane Sonko, who was disqualified from standing in the election because of a defamation conviction.
Faye contested the elections as an independent candidate due to the dissolution of his Patriots of Senegal (PASTEF) party last July for causing unrest. The PASTEF party, which was founded by Sonko in 2014, endorsed Faye.
The left-wing populist has been organising protests against President Macky Sall accusing his government of corruption and failing to address chronic poverty. Sall’s decision to extend the elections originally scheduled for February triggered the latest round of political crisis.
The elections were held after the intervention of the Constitutional Court.
He wants to rid Senegal of the CFA franc inherited from the colonial era, which is pegged to the euro. He proposes introducing a new currency instead. The CFA franc, backed by the French treasury, is accepted in 14 member countries.
Additionally, he wishes to renegotiate mining and hydrocarbon contracts. The country is expected to start hydrocarbon production this year.
The biggest challenge for the new leader would be to address the more than 20 percent unemployment rate.
“It’s an injustice that I can’t find work. I was given a state diploma and the state can’t find work for me,” Yacoub Diouf from Senegal told Al Jazeera’s Nicolas Haque.
Mr Faye fondly recalls his rural upbringing in Ndiaganiao, where he says he returns every Sunday to work the land.
His love and respect for village life is matched by his deep distrust of Senegal’s elites and establishment politics.
“He’s never been a minister and wasn’t a statesman so critics question his lack of experience,” analyst Alioune Tine tells the BBC.
“But, from Faye’s point of view, the insiders who’ve run the country since 1960 have made some catastrophic failures.”
Fighting poverty, injustice and corruption are top of Mr Faye’s agenda. While working at the Treasury, he and Mr Sonko created a union taskforce to tackle graft.
He is ushering in an era of “sovereignty” and “rupture” as opposed to more of the same, he told voters, and that is especially true of ties to France.
Senegal’s president-elect says he will drop the much-criticised CFA franc currency, which is pegged to the euro and backed by former colonial power France.
Mr Faye wants to replace it with a new Senegalese, or regional West African, currency, although this will not be easy.
Strengthening judicial independence and creating jobs for Senegal’s large young population are also key priorities for Mr Faye – neither of which “President Sall paid much attention to and it caught up with him”, Ms Touré adds.