Senegal has more than quadrupled the deposit payable by candidates for next year's presidential elections saying the move will discourage "fanciful" candidates, but opposition parties denounced it as a bid to limit the field, according to Reuters. The interior ministry, which is in charge of organising the Feb. 25 polls, said in a statement it had set the deposit at 25 million CFA francs ($48,730), more than four times the 6 million CFA franc level for the last presidential election in 2000. Each candidate must pay the deposit and only those who poll more than 5 percent of the vote get it back. The increase takes the deposit even further beyond the reach of most people in the West African country, where wages for many manual jobs are around 40,000 CFA francs ($78) a month. The ruling Democratic Party of Senegal (PDS) said the move would help eliminate "fanciful" candidates. "In order to do politics you really need to have the means. It is not possible to do politics without resources," PDS spokesman Iba Der Thiam said. Some political opponents disagreed. "The PDS wants to force the large majority of political parties out of the race," said Ousmane Badiane, of the Democratic League, a member of the coalition of opposition parties. "We are turning our democracy into something based on money," Badiane added. President Abdoulaye Wade, of the PDS, was elected in 2000 ending 40 years of Socialist Party rule since independence from France in 1960 in a rare democratic transfer of power in volatile West Africa, where Senegal is virtually alone in never having had a military coup d'etat.
