{"id":31568,"date":"2017-01-04T00:05:42","date_gmt":"2017-01-04T00:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/senegal-expats-to-be-allowed-to-run-for\/"},"modified":"2017-01-04T00:05:39","modified_gmt":"2017-01-04T00:05:39","slug":"senegal-expats-to-be-allowed-to-run-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/senegal-expats-to-be-allowed-to-run-for\/","title":{"rendered":"Senegal expats to be allowed to run for parliament"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Senegalese people living abroad will be able to run for office in their home country for the first time in July&#8217;s elections, after MPs voted to increase the number of seats in parliament.}<\/p>\n<p>The national assembly will add 15 seats for members of the country&#8217;s diaspora, bringing the total to 165.<\/p>\n<p>There are hundreds of thousands of Senegalese expatriates who support families back home with remittances.<\/p>\n<p>The new MPs will have to return to Senegal to serve their five-year terms.<\/p>\n<p>The opposition has criticised the move, describing it as a waste of money.<br \/>\n&#8220;This measure is absurd,&#8221; Amar Sarr, an MP from the main opposition Democractic Part of Senegal (PDS) told the BBC.<\/p>\n<p>Across French-speaking West Africa, expatriates are often given a say on national politics through the foreign ministry, but rarely through direct parliamentary representation.<\/p>\n<p>Opposition MPs unsuccessfully argued for keeping the size of the National Assembly at its current level of 150 MPs.<\/p>\n<p>They have said they will appeal the bill at the Constitutional Court.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-17422 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_93215235_senegalnationalassembly.jpg\" alt=\"Under the new move, the number of MPs will increase from 150 to 165\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Senegalese people living abroad will be able to run for office in their home country for the first time in July&#8217;s elections, after MPs voted to increase the number of seats in parliament.} The national assembly will add 15 seats for members of the country&#8217;s diaspora, bringing the total to 165. There are hundreds of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-31568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31568\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31568"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=31568"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=31568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}