President Sall's logic is that the government is made for the people, so why should 16 million USD go to a governmental body when it could go towards actual flood relief. And that pesky VP office that is allocated 4 million USD... who needs that anyway? Especially since the position has stayed open since its creation in 2009 by the previous president, Abdoulaye Wade.
The press on this is divided. Ex-President Wade was kicked out after waves of protest when he tried to run for an unconstitutional third term, so hopefully Sall is not making the similar mistake of trying to entrench himself in power. However, the Senegalese Senate was largely full of opponents of President Sall, so going unicameral doesn't look great. That said, allafrica.com had a Nigerian author who wrote to say that African governments are often out of touch with the people and that this is a selfless move by the government (ignoring that the Senegalese Senate voted to keep itself in existence but was outvoted by the National Assembly).
Random Kate Thoughts: My instinct is that this is a very scary early dismantling of checks and balances. That said, President Sall has donated a lot of money to help an entrepreneurial leadership summer camp that my students run in Senegal every summer, so he's probably not THAT bad of a guy. Floods are horrible things and as president, yes he does need to protect the nation's people. Trimming the fat is great, but abolishing the Senate sounds very strange to my American ears, even though the Senegalese Senate has only existed in this form since 2007. Can you imagine Bush offering to abolish the Senate to pay for the ruins of Hurricane Katrina?!
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