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

The head of state has no doubt about the outcome. For Bassirou Diomaye Faye, Ousmane Sonko, president 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 people facing a difficult period. This assurance also sounds like a warning to the man who served as his prime minister for two years.

For the context has profoundly changed. On 22 May 2026, a presidential decree ended Ousmane Sonko’s functions as prime minister 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 their 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 this 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.

The vote: a majority’s first weapon

On paper, nothing obliges deputies to adopt a finance bill. The Constitution gives the National Assembly alone the power to vote laws and oversee government action. With 130 seats out of 165 won in the November 2024 legislative elections, Pastef can reject the text on its own in plenary session, without needing any ally. This is the most direct path, but also the most politically risky: a frontal refusal would make Sonko’s party bear responsibility for a potential blockage of public finances amid 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 deputy 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 maneuvering room of the Diomaye Président coalition inside the chamber.

Between adoption and rejection, deputies 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 expense, 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 tied 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 deputies to pronounce themselves as a bloc, bringing them back to the initial dilemma: adopt the text as wanted by the executive 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 greatly reduces the possibility of burying the text: priority inscription of a bill on the agenda is automatic 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 maximum the period the Assembly has to vote finance bills. If the text is not definitively voted by the end of this period, it is put into force by decree, taking into account amendments voted by deputies 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 deputies to refer.

The executive has another tool, already used in December 2024 to adopt the 2025 budget, 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 deputies to be admissible, and 83 votes to be adopted. Pastef has far more than that threshold. If Ahmadou Al Aminou Lô’s government chose this path, Sonko’s deputies could not only fail the budget but also bring down the government. A formidable weapon, but heavy with consequences, since it would open a government crisis just weeks before the date from which the head of state regains his power to dissolve.

2 December: the deadline that balances forces

This is the other key element of the balance of power. Article 87 authorizes the President of the Republic to dissolve the National Assembly after consulting the Prime Minister and the president 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 deputies back to voters. A prolonged budget blockage would offer Diomaye Faye a strong argument to justify a dissolution, while a smooth adoption would deprive the president of this political lever.

In the end, Ousmane Sonko indeed has 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 holds the Article 68 decree, the Article 86 engagement of responsibility, and soon the Article 87 dissolution. More than a legal question, the examination of the 2026 revised finance bill promises to be a real-life test of the new cohabitation between the Palace and the chamber.