Senegal’s special funds reform: will the constitutional council settle the fight between Sonko’s assembly and Faye’s presidency?
When Senegal’s National Assembly voted on Thursday, October 1, 2026, to override the government’s amendments to the special funds reform, it triggered a high-stakes institutional battle. The question now is whether the Constitutional Council will once again decide the outcome, as it did in August, or whether the assembly’s version will survive constitutional scrutiny. The answer will shape how transparently public money is managed for years to come.
The organic bill No. 38/2026, which amends the Organic Law on Finance Laws (LOLF), was the centerpiece of Thursday’s plenary session. Its stated goal is to strengthen budget transparency and regulate the management of special funds—credits often described as the presidency’s “slush fund.” This is the second attempt after the Constitutional Council struck down the first version on August 25, 2026, in decision No. 7/C/2026, ruling that the status of public credits falls exclusively under organic law. Pastef deputies returned with the correct legal vehicle, but the substantive disagreement with the executive remains unresolved.
The government defends the president’s “social role”
Justice Minister and Keeper of the Seals Me Moussa Sarr presented the government’s position. While claiming to share the transparency objective, the executive proposed deep adjustments.
The first disagreement concerns the nature of special funds. The bill sought to make them a distinct category reserved for defense, security, and diplomacy missions. The government opposes this, arguing that such a restriction ignores the social character of the Republic enshrined in Article 1 of the Constitution. In its view, the head of state must be able to mobilize these resources for national solidarity actions in response to humanitarian emergencies.
Through Amendment No. 2, the executive proposed reintegrating these expenses into the overall endowment of constitutional institutions under Article 14 of the LOLF. Me Moussa Sarr invoked Directive No. 06/2009/CM/UEMOA, which sets a limitative list of budget endowments. Isolating special funds would create a legal vacuum, he argued, because no authorizing officer would be designated.
The second point of friction concerns the deputies’ oversight powers under Article 70. Through Amendment No. 3, the government wanted to limit the Finance Commission’s monitoring to the current annual management. This would remove the assembly’s ability to scrutinize the use of credits at the end of each budget year. For the Keeper of the Seals, such a prerogative would encroach on the exclusive competences of the Court of Auditors.
The executive also wanted any request to hear a minister by deputies to be automatically transmitted to the president of the Republic, in accordance with the assembly’s internal rules.
Heading to the Constitutional Council
To lock down the text, the government deployed the blocked vote. Me Moussa Sarr requested the application of Article 82, paragraph 4, of the Constitution and Article 87 of the internal rules, which require a single vote on the text with only the amendments retained by the government. “The government does not see transparency as a constraint, but as a lever for consolidating the rule of law,” he argued, presenting the blocked vote as a constitutional tool to ensure the coherence of texts.
The Pastef majority did not follow. Deputies rejected all of the executive’s proposals to maintain their own version of the text. The disagreement between the Palace and the Hémicycle is now complete.
The outcome of this standoff will be decided before the sages. An organic law can only be promulgated after being declared constitutional by the Constitutional Council, which is seized by the president of the Republic. The text voted by the majority must therefore pass through this filter.
The government will then have several arguments: compliance with UEMOA directives, the competences of the Court of Auditors, and the regularity of the procedure after the rejection of a blocked vote that is nonetheless provided for by the Constitution. These are all points on which the sages will have to rule.
