By Nick Tattersall

DAKAR, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Senegal’s carefully polished reputation as a bastion of democracy in turbulent West Africa is dimming as its octogenarian leader, Abdoulaye Wade, grows increasingly autocratic, rights groups say.

Political posturing aimed at positioning his son to succeed him, the detention without trial of critical journalists and the diminishing powers of parliament all betray Senegal’s faltering democratic credentials, Wade’s critics say.

They say his obsession with hosting an international Islamic conference next year — a two-day event for which luxury hotels and new highways are being built in Dakar — have pushed more pressing social and economic problems off the political agenda.

"The Republic’s agenda is dominated in the short term by the organisation of the Islamic Summit and in the medium term by political manoeuvring around President Wade’s succession," said Alioune Tine, head of African human rights group RADDHO.

"The presidential role has become an arch-institution which is not just overbearing but enslaving and subjugating all the other institutions, reducing them to dwarf status," he told a news conference in Dakar on Wednesday.

Wade’s son, Karim, is an influential presidential adviser and head of the government agency managing the infrastructure projects for the Islamic conference, a role which has seen him increasingly involved in public debate and raised questions about his own political ambitions.

"This skilfully maintained veil of mystery (around Karim) allows his accomplices and henchmen to sow in the public mind the idea that the son of the head of state could legitimately succeed his father," Habib Sy, director of Senegalese anti-graft group Aid Transparency, wrote in a local newspaper this month.

Wade’s spokesman has publicly denied that Karim is the president’s anointed successor.

WEAKENING PARLIAMENT

Senegal’s reputation for political stability has long made it a favourite among western donors and investors. It was one of the first African countries to espouse multiparty politics in the 1970s and is the only West African country other than the Atlantic archipelago of Cape Verde never to have seen a coup.

But riots swept across the capital last week after police tried to evict thousands of street vendors. The protests were fuelled by wider discontent over Wade’s perceived failure to address high youth unemployment and rising food prices.

Diplomats and local civil society groups have voiced growing concern over the increasing power of the presidency.

Macky Sall, the country’s parliamentary speaker, was unceremoniously sacked by Wade as deputy leader of the ruling PDS party two weeks ago after summoning Karim to appear before a finance commission charged with overseeing public spending.

Some political commentators fear Sall may now also lose his position as head of the national assembly.

"If he is removed from parliament as he has been from the party, it will totally ruin what credibility remains for the national assembly," Tine said.

The senate is an even weaker balance against the power of the executive. The PDS won 34 of 35 seats in an August poll boycotted by the opposition, while the remaining 65 senators are appointed directly by Wade.

Journalists who have criticised Wade have found themselves jailed, triggering criticism from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

"The government’s continued use of criminal defamation and insult laws to jail and prosecute journalists undermines Senegal’s democratic credentials," it said this month after four journalists held for critical stories were provisionally freed. (Editing by Pascal Fletcher)

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