; Whereas President Macky Sall was elected to a second and final term in office in 2019 in elections that were generally regarded as free and fair, despite the disqualification of two prominent opposition party leaders due to prior corruption convictions; Whereas, in July 2023, President Sall announced that he would retire in 2024, after insinuating that he would pursue a third term, in accordance with the Senegalese constitution which limits presidents to two terms in office, thereby becoming the first president in Senegalese history to respect constitutionally mandated term limits and setting in important precedent for future presidents of Senegal; Whereas the February 2024 election will be the first presidential election in Senegalese history without an incumbent president on the ballot; Whereas, according to Afrobarometer public opinion polling, the Senegalese people prefer democracy to any alternative (84 percent), believe the president should be limited to two terms in office (79 percent), and reject the concept of military rule (71 percent); Whereas, according to the same polling, the Senegalese people say their country is either not a democracy or a democracy with major problems (53 percent, an 8 percent increase since 2021), and are not satisfied with the way democracy is working in Senegal (51 percent); Whereas Freedom House lowered Senegal’s rating from Free to Partly Free in 2020 due to the politically motivated prosecutions of opposition leaders and electoral law changes that reduced the competitiveness of the opposition ; Whereas Reporters Without Borders warned of an increasingly threatening press environment in advance of the 2022 legislative elections and the government arrested and jailed journalists under a new 2021 law for allegedly disseminating fake news to discredit public institutions or prejudice public decency ; Whereas state security forces in Senegal responded with excessive force and took steps to restrict freedom of assembly in 2021, 2022, and 2023 in response to public protests