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AP
DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Senegal braced itself for possible violence before the constitutional court decides Friday whether to allow the country's leader of 11 years to run for a third term even though the constitution was revised after he came to office to allow a maximum of two.

The court is due to release the list of candidates running in next month's presidential election and the big question is whether President Abdoulaye Wade's name will be on it. Many worry that there could be violence if the five-judge council approves Wade's candidacy.

Police wearing fiberglass helmets took positions at strategic intersections in the capital. Businesses sent their employees home and schools invited parents to pick up their children early. Hundreds of youth carrying cardboard signs calling for the departure of Wade milled around a downtown square, where the opposition had called for a protest before the court's verdict.

Earlier this week, the 85-year-old Wade turned in his application to run in the Feb. 26 election, defying calls to step aside. For 25 years before he was elected in 2000, Wade, a lawyer with multiple degrees from French universities, was the country's opposition leader. He ran and lost in four elections before his victory 11 years ago which was hailed as a breakthrough for democracy on the continent and for a region better known for strongman rule.

Since then, the man that was considered an icon of democracy has come under mounting criticism, first for delegating increasing power to his son, and for the numerous corruption scandals that have overshadowed his administration's achievements, including the building of numerous roads and bridges.

In 2001, the government revised the constitution to impose a two-term limit and after winning a second term in 2007, Wade told reporters he would not seek a third term. He then reversed course, arguing that the term limits were imposed after he was elected, and that no law can be applied retroactively, so he should be allowed to run for a third term.

"I'm a lawyer too. And the constitution, it's me that revised it. All by myself. No one knows it better than me ... No one can interpret it better than me," Wade told the news portal Dakaractu.Com in an interview this week. "I was elected in 2000 on the basis of a law dating from 1963. After I was elected, I saw to it that a new constitution was adopted. Everyone knows that a law dictates the present, and the future, but it cannot be retroactive."

Senegal is considered one of the most mature democracies in Africa, and unlike many of its neighbors, its democratic tradition dates to even before independence from France 51 years ago. Starting in the mid-1800s, France allowed its colony to elect a deputy who served in the French parliament.

And in his official biography, Wade traces his roots to the Cayor kingdom located in Senegal's central plains, where kings were elected by a circle of elders rather than through a hereditary system common in many other parts of Africa.

"What shocks people is that he would try to run for a third term," says the country's leading investigative journalist Abdou Latif Coulibaly, the editor-in-chief of The Gazette magazine who voted for Wade in 2000 but who is now supporting the opposition. "It's the problem of his age. It's the problem of the constitution. And to be frank, people are very scared that he will try to hand power to his son — which is something that the population does not want at all."

Hours before the court was due to release its verdict, Pape Sy circled the city looking for an open gas station. For three days, a fuel strike had closed down gas stations, adding yet another point of applied pressure. Finally in the Medina neighborhood of the capital, he pulled in behind the 13 other cars lined up head-to-toe at a Total station, which had just reopened. His gasoline gauge had already dipped below 0.

"Things don't smell good," he said, summing up the mood in the capital. "There are economic problems, and these other issues are attaching themselves onto that like pieces of Scotch tape. People want change. ... To me this really feels like the end of a reign."

Unlike nearly all its neighbors, Senegal does not have history of violent demonstrations, or of military intervention in state affairs. The country was shaken, however, by the riots that shut down the capital last summer when Wade's party attempted to rush a law through parliament that would have created the post of vice president, a move that critics said was as an attempt to create a mechanism of succession through which Wade could pass power to his son.

When it came time for the afternoon prayer in this predominantly Muslim nation, the young men that had gathered for the protest stopped to pray, kneeling on the sandy median, on the pavement and on the dais.

"People want Wade to leave," said Sy. "But they also want peace."