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| Ousmane Sonko waves to his supporters at the HLM primary school in Ziguinchor, Senegal. © Muhamadou Bittaye, AFP |
Ousmane Sonko, the head of the opposition, has been declared eligible to run for president in February after a Senegalese court ordered his reinstatement on the electoral register.
Sonko has recently been involved in multiple court cases on various charges, all of which he refutes.
While he was found guilty of "corrupting the youth" and removed from the voter list, he was found not guilty of rape in June.
He claims he is the target of an effort to disqualify him from running for president.
To run, a candidate needs to be listed on the voter registration list.
A government attorney declared that the decision would be appealed.
One of the most stable democracies in West Africa has seen multiple deadly unrest episodes as a result of his numerous incarcerations throughout the previous two years.
Paste's party was disbanded by the government following his most recent detention in July on insurrection-related charges.
Sonko, 49, was found guilty last month on allegations that he had threatened and sexually assaulted a massage therapist at a beauty parlour in 2021. When she made the claims, which he refuted, she was 20 years old.
Sonko's political career has taken off in the last several years, largely thanks to his popularity among Senegal's youth unemployment rate.
In 2016, he was fired from his position as a tax inspector. He then ran for parliament and was elected to Ziguinchor, a city in the south.
In the 2019 presidential race, he placed third.
President Macky Sall has said he will not stand for re-election following speculation that he would seek an unconstitutional third term.
When Sonko was arrested in 2021 for disrupting public order, clashes left at least a dozen people dead.
