Nairobi, March 31 -- Senegal is just concluding a political transition that did not need to be as eventful as it was if the outgoing president, Macky Sall, had not tried to be too clever by half.

Sall has been something of an oddity, someone who acceded to power in controversial circumstances wrought by his predecessor, but who was not above trying monkey tricks of his own when it was time for him to leave.

Senegal itself, in fact, is something of an oddity, by not answering to the stereotypical African politics we got used to in the 1960s and through the '90s. Its first president, Leopold Senghor, crafted a semblance of guided democracy in which he was almost above criticism but opponents could have their say, if they did not mind a fe...