organize elections lies with the government – more precisely with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the general delegations at the elections – and the electoral commission has no other role than to supervise elections and ensure their regularity. The mitigated feature of the Malian experience is a contrasting trait of its electoral history. The Independent Electoral Commission of Ivory Coast also arouses a mixed evaluation while no doubt hoping that it will be able to accomplish the on-going electoral process. It shares the peculiarities of the present Ivorian political setting. The political arrangements are in fact inclined to be substituted by legal norms and the electoral commission has to bear the brunt of the situation. It has turned out to be a kind of hostage of an unpredictable political game. The right of logic and prediction which it possesses does not correspond at all with the logic of politics, made out of precarious equilibriums and momentary alliances. Such a situation is indeed not imputable but certainly does not favour legitimacy. The main lesson from the Ivorian situation is its bringing to the fore of the relationship between the general political context and the development, in terms of legitimacy, of the election monitoring body. The Senegalese ANEC has been able to overcome some diverse problems regularly faced by the National Election Observatory(ONEL) which it replaced in 2005. It has succeeded in attaining the permanent status as an institution and acquired the powers to sanction. It is however regrettable that the current burning issue of budget allocation is still very much unsolved. Thus during the presidential election of February 2007, ANEC claimed yet two weeks from the holding of the elections the payment of the necessary credits for the accomplishment of its tasks. The deadline of 15 th January 2007 for the release of this budget was not respected. The Senegalese electoral system has been undergoing a serious crisis of confidence, which was at the origin of the boycott of the 91