(Photo Courtesy UN Photo/Ryan Brown)

Dakar — With presidential elections in Senegal still two years away, the tide is conspicuously turning against the ruling Parti Democratic Senegalais (PDS) of the ageing and politically savvy Abdoulaye Wade.

There are no signs Mr Wade will throw in the towel, rather, he is hell-bent on improvising strategies that may earn his party a third consecutive victory.

After the landmark failure of his son, Karim Wade, in last March's local elections, to take over the mayorship of the Senegalese capital Dakar, President Wade has now announced that he will himself run the marathon come April 2012.

President Wade seemed to have taken the decision that his son succeeds him at the end of the last election in 2007 when his renegade and youthful former Prime Minister Idrissa Seck -- with millions of dollars he allegedly siphoned from government -- landed second to the president.

In many of his innuendoes and meringues alluding to Mr Seck, Mr Wade had insinuated that if money was the main prerequisite for winning the presidential slot in Senegal, then his son, Karim, an international banker and heir, was best positioned to do so.

After the defeat of his son and in a bid to keep him in the political spotlight, Mr Wade catapulted Karim to one of the most prestigious positions of Minister of Infrastructure, territorial development and air transport which Mr Karim commands to date.

But the second and visibly the last straw that could break Mr Wade's back in the presidential race is the bribery scandal involving the president and an International Monetary Fund expatriate, Mr Alex Segura. That episode has played negatively against the prestige and charisma of President Wade and his PDS so much so that it has given a clear upper ground and an inestimable weight to the Senegalese opposition parties who are now using the scandal as their Trojan horse in systematically gaining more political terrain both at home and abroad ahead of the 2012 polls.

In October, Senegal admitted that it gave a "money gift" to Mr Segura at the end of his three-year posting, citing an African tradition of offering goodbye presents. The gift which the IMF said amounted to 100,000 euros was returned within days by Mr Segura.

Meanwhile, to gain a third victory, President Wade is no longer banking on the marvellous infrastructure and political gains he has earned since he came to power in 2000, such as the beautiful roads in the capital and in other regions of the country, the string of rural university campuses and the hundreds of kindergartens he built throughout the country, mechanised agricultural projects and the reduction of the presidential mandate from seven to five years.

The President has chosen to mend fences with his former political enemies and most of whom he had groomed but have over the years, become full grown political dinosaurs.

They had to part ways with the "old man" over contrasting political ideology, financial indiscipline and/or national leadership issues.

Hence, Mr Wade, 83, has reunited with Mr Idrissa Seck and his former Minister of Interior, Mr Ousman Ngom, both of whom he groomed when they served as in the PDS when the party was in the opposition and has also roped in an experienced and longest serving Senegalese Cabinet minister, Mr Jibo Leity Ka into his (Wade's) Liberal movement dubbed, 'SOPI', meaning change.

Mr Ngom, a trained and experienced lawyer, had quit Mr Wade's party after two failed presidential elections before the 2000 elections and joined the then ruling Socialist Party of President Abdou Diouf and was given the health ministry portfolio. Mr Ka was the last politician with a significant electorate count during the 2000 elections that resisted the opposition coalition's appeal during a run-off election to join it in a bid to oust Abdou Diouf's Socialist Party.

The coalition with Wade as leader eventually won the election, and in the aftermath, called on Mr Ka to join the new government headed by Mr Wade.

Meanwhile, in his nationwide broadcast last week after the reunion with the three political gurus, Mr Wade announced that he was contemplating creating the post of vice president -for the first time in Senegal's history - and would name one of the three -- Mr Seck, Mr Ngom or Mr Ka to the position.

Passing over the mantle

He went on further to promise that he was also contemplating passing over the mantle of state to any of the three at the threshold of the 2012 run as the country's first President Leopold Sedar Senghor did, as a way of compensating the loyalty of the heir-to-be.

This comment created quite a stir in the political landscape in Senegal with many of the supporters of the three politicians threatening to quit their parties due to the divided loyalties of their standard bearers.

Analysts believe that Mr Wade's latest strategy could possibly earn him victory as the massive opposition political coalition -- over 10 parties - under the banner of 'Beno Siggil Senegal' continues to fail in putting forward a single candidate to face that of the ruling party.