Senegal’s 2026 budget: what a Sonko blockade would mean for households and businesses

Bassirou Diomaye Faye is convinced that the Pastef majority will pass the 2026 revised finance bill. But inside the National Assembly, Ousmane Sonko has real levers to slow down, reshape, or even bring down the text. The real question is what the Constitution allows each side to do — and at what cost to the country.

The head of state does not doubt the outcome. For Bassirou Diomaye Faye, Ousmane Sonko — speaker of the National Assembly and leader of Pastef, which holds a large majority in the chamber — will have no choice but to validate the revised finance bill in the interest of Senegalese citizens facing a difficult period. That assurance also sounds like a warning to the man who served as his prime minister for two years.

The context has changed profoundly. On 22 May 2026, a presidential decree ended Ousmane Sonko’s functions at the Primature and those of his government. 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 revised finance bill is now its first battleground.

The text does not arrive in a serene climate. After the agreement reached with the International Monetary Fund, which still needs approval from its board, the government prepared the draft revised finance bill. Ousmane Sonko publicly demanded clarifications on the content of the agreement and on debt treatment. After weeks of controversy over the transmission of the file, the Assembly confirmed it had duly received the 2026 revised finance bill, along with the president’s transmission letter and the presentation decree, on Friday 18 September 2026.

A crushing majority and the vote as a first weapon

On paper, nothing obliges MPs to adopt a finance bill. The Constitution gives the National Assembly alone the power to vote laws and control government action. With 130 seats out of 165 won in the November 2024 legislative elections, Pastef can by itself reject the text in plenary session, without needing a single ally. It is the most direct route, but also the most politically risky: a frontal refusal would make Sonko’s party bear responsibility for a possible blockage of public finances in the middle of negotiations with the IMF.

The head of state cannot count on defections to reverse the trend either. Article 60 of the Constitution provides that any MP who resigns from their party during the legislature is automatically stripped of their mandate. This lock protects the discipline of the Pastef group and limits the room for manoeuvre of the Diomaye Président coalition inside the chamber.

Between adoption and rejection, MPs have a third, more subtle 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 aims 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 spending planned by the government. A way to deeply rewrite the executive’s arbitrations, especially those linked to commitments made with the IMF, without going through a pure and simple 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 MPs to decide as a bloc, which brings them back to the original dilemma: adopt the text as the executive wants or assume its rejection.

Playing for time: a double-edged strategy

The presidency of the Assembly gives Ousmane Sonko real influence over the work calendar. But Article 84 strongly reduces the possibility of burying the text: priority inscription of a bill on the agenda is a right as soon as the President of the Republic or the prime minister requests it.

Above all, time works against an obstruction strategy. Article 68 sets at sixty days at most the deadline for the Assembly to vote finance bills. If the text is not definitively voted by the end of this period, it is brought into force by decree, taking into account amendments voted by MPs and accepted by the President of the Republic. With the deposit registered on 18 September, this deadline falls around 17 November 2026. Letting the examination drag on would therefore offer Diomaye Faye the possibility of promulgating his budget without Parliament’s approval.

A grey area remains, however. The Constitution explicitly provides for the case of a text “not voted” within the deadlines, but remains silent on the hypothesis of a formal rejection in session. The question of whether recourse to decree remains open after an explicit negative vote could then be brought before the Constitutional Council, which Article 74 allows one tenth of MPs to refer to.

The executive has another tool, already used in December 2024 to adopt the 2025 budget, at a time when Ousmane Sonko himself was leading 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 considered adopted, unless a motion of censure, filed within twenty-four hours, is voted by an absolute majority of Assembly members.

This is where the Pastef majority regains all its power. A motion of censure requires only the signature of one tenth of MPs to be admissible, and 83 votes to be adopted. Pastef largely has this threshold. If the government of Ahmadou Al Aminou Lô chose this path, Sonko’s MPs could not only fail the budget but also bring down the government. A formidable weapon, but heavy with consequences, since it would open a governmental crisis just weeks before the date from which the head of state regains his power of dissolution.

2 December: the deadline that balances the forces

This is the other key element of the balance of power. Article 87 authorises the President of the Republic to dissolve the National Assembly after consulting the prime minister and the speaker of the Assembly, but prohibits 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 recalled that this date had not yet been reached.

The calendar thus draws a tight sequence. The sixty-day deadline to vote the revised finance bill expires in mid-November, a few days before the head of state can send MPs back to the voters. A prolonged budget blockage would give Diomaye Faye a strong argument to justify a dissolution, while a smooth adoption would deprive the president of this political lever.

Ultimately, Ousmane Sonko does have the constitutional means to block or rewrite Bassirou Diomaye Faye’s budget — through rejection, reduction amendments, or censure. But each of these options exposes him to a high political cost, against an executive that keeps in hand the decree of Article 68, the engagement of responsibility of Article 86 and, soon, the dissolution of Article 87. More than a legal question, the examination of the 2026 revised finance bill looks set to be a real-life test of the new cohabitation between the Palace and the chamber — with direct consequences for the economic stability of Senegalese households and businesses.