Ousmane Sonko’s rise to the presidency of Senegal’s National Assembly has quietly redrawn the balance of power over the 2026 rectified finance bill, a text that could shape the economic fate of Senegalese households at a moment of real strain.
Bassirou Diomaye Faye insists the Pastef majority will approve the 2026 rectified finance law. Yet beneath that public confidence, the institutional mechanics tell a more layered story. Inside the National Assembly, Ousmane Sonko holds genuine levers to slow, reshape or even bring down the text — but each one carries a price, and the Constitution sets the limits for both camps.
The head of state has little doubt about the outcome. For Bassirou Diomaye Faye, Ousmane Sonko — speaker of the National Assembly and leader of Pastef, which commands a wide majority in the chamber — will have no choice but to rally his deputies behind the rectified finance bill in the national interest, as households weather a difficult period. That assurance also reads as a warning to the man who served as his prime minister for two years.
Because the context has shifted fundamentally. On 22 May 2026, a presidential decree ended Ousmane Sonko’s tenure at the Primature and brought his government to a close. Ahmadou Al Aminou Lô was appointed prime minister on 25 May 2026, while the Pastef leader took the helm of the National Assembly, replacing El Malick Ndiaye. The 2024 duo has become an institutional face-off, and the 2026 rectified finance bill is now the first battleground.
The text arrives in far from serene conditions. After the agreement reached with the International Monetary Fund — which still needs approval from its board — the government prepared the draft rectified finance law. Ousmane Sonko publicly demanded clarity on the content of the accord and on how the debt would be handled. After weeks of controversy over how the file was transmitted, the Assembly confirmed it had duly received the 2026 rectified finance bill, along with the president’s transmittal letter and the presentation decree, on Friday 18 September 2026.
The vote: a first weapon in the hands of an overwhelming majority
On paper, nothing obliges deputies to adopt a finance bill. The Constitution grants the National Assembly alone the power to pass laws and scrutinize government action. With 130 of 165 seats won in the November 2024 legislative elections, Pastef can reject the text in plenary on its own, without a single ally. It is the most direct route, but also the most politically risky: an outright refusal would place responsibility for a potential public finance blockage squarely on Sonko’s party, in the middle of negotiations with the IMF.
The head of state cannot count on defections to flip the balance either. Article 60 of the Constitution provides that any deputy who resigns from his party during the legislature is automatically stripped of his mandate. That lock protects Pastef’s group discipline and narrows the room for manoeuvre of the Diomaye Président coalition inside the chamber.
Between adoption and rejection, deputies have a third, subtler path. Article 82 strictly frames their right of amendment on budgetary matters: no additional article or amendment to a finance bill is admissible unless it seeks to delete or effectively reduce an expenditure, or to create or increase a revenue. In other words, the majority cannot inflate credits, but it can cut into the spending planned by the government — a way to rewrite the executive’s arbitrations in depth, particularly those tied to commitments made to the IMF, without a plain rejection.
The government, however, has a counter. The same Article 82 allows it to request a single vote on all or part of the text, retaining only the amendments it has proposed or accepted. This procedure forces deputies to decide as a bloc, bringing them back to the original dilemma: adopt the text as the executive wants it, or own its rejection.
Playing for time: a strategy that cuts both ways
The speakership gives Ousmane Sonko real influence over the scheduling of business. But Article 84 sharply limits the possibility of burying the text: priority inscription of a bill on the agenda is automatic once the president of the republic or the prime minister requests it.
Above all, time works against an obstruction strategy. Article 68 sets a maximum of sixty days for the Assembly to vote finance bills. If the text is not definitively adopted by the end of that period, it enters into force by decree, taking into account the amendments voted by deputies and accepted by the president of the republic. Since the bill was registered on 18 September, that deadline falls around 17 November 2026. Delaying scrutiny would therefore hand Diomaye Faye the option of promulgating his budget without parliamentary approval.
A grey area remains, however. The Constitution explicitly covers the case of a text “not voted” within the deadline, but is silent on the scenario of a formal rejection in session. Whether recourse to a decree remains open after an explicit negative vote could end up before the Constitutional Council, which Article 74 allows one-tenth of deputies to refer to it.
The executive holds another tool, already used in December 2024 to pass the 2025 budget, at a time when Ousmane Sonko himself was running the government. Article 86 allows the prime minister, after deliberation by the Council of Ministers, to engage the government’s responsibility on the vote of a finance bill. The text is then deemed adopted, unless a censure motion, filed within twenty-four hours, is passed by an absolute majority of Assembly members.
That is where Pastef’s majority recovers its full strength. A censure motion requires only the signature of one-tenth of deputies to be admissible, and 83 votes to pass. Pastef comfortably clears that threshold. If Ahmadou Al Aminou Lô’s government chose that path, Sonko’s deputies could not only sink the budget but also bring down the government — a formidable weapon, but one weighed down by consequences, since it would open a government crisis just weeks before the date from which the head of state regains his power to dissolve.
2 December: the deadline that defines the balance of forces
This is the other key element of the standoff. Article 87 authorizes the president of the republic to dissolve the National Assembly after consulting the prime minister and the speaker, but forbids any dissolution during the first two years of the legislature. Installed on 2 December 2024, the current Assembly is protected until 2 December 2026. Asked about a possible dissolution, Bassirou Diomaye Faye himself noted that the date had not yet arrived.
The calendar thus draws a tight sequence. The sixty-day deadline to vote the rectified finance law expires in mid-November, days before the head of state can send deputies back to voters. A prolonged budget blockage would give Diomaye Faye a weighty argument to justify dissolution, while a smooth adoption would deprive the president of that political lever.
In the end, Ousmane Sonko does hold the constitutional means to block or rewrite Bassirou Diomaye Faye’s budget — through rejection, through reduction amendments or through censure. But each option exposes him to a high political cost, against an executive that keeps in hand the Article 68 decree, the Article 86 engagement of responsibility and, soon, the Article 87 dissolution. More than a question of law, the scrutiny of the 2026 rectified finance bill looks set to be a full-scale test of the new cohabitation between the Palace and the chamber.
