Candidates in Senegal's presidential election

Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade is hoping to win a second mandate in elections on Sunday in the only country in West Africa not to have experienced a coup since independence.

Here are key facts about the main candidates standing in the presidential poll.

ABDOULAYE WADE (PDS)

The incumbent, in his 80s, won presidential polls in 2000 which ended four decades of Socialist rule. It was the end of a long march to power that began when he broke with the Socialists, then the only party, and its founding father, Leopold Sedar Senghor, to press for multi-party politics.

A charismatic lawyer, Wade first ran for president against Senghor in 1978 and lost. When riots followed a contested 1988 election, he was thrown in jail for inciting insurrection. He was granted amnesty but lost his seat in the National Assembly. He ran again in 1993, taking second place again, behind Senghor's successor Abdou Diouf.

Born in the northern Senegalese town of Saint Louis, Wade was educated in primary and secondary schools in Paris. He holds degrees and teaching certificates in economics, law, humanities, mathematics and physics and worked as a barrister for a few years in France.

Last October, the ruling Democratic Party (PDS) backed Wade - a sprightly, dapper statesmen well-known abroad – to stand for a second term. A 2001 referendum shortened presidential terms to five years from the current seven.

OUSMANE TANOR DIENG (PS)

First Secretary of the Socialist Party (PS), 59, Dieng is a diplomat by training. He served as diplomatic advisor to post-independence president Senghor and later became minister in charge of presidential services under President Abdou Diouf.

Many Socialists blame Dieng for the defeat of President Diouf during the 2000 presidential election. He is taking part for the first time in a presidential race.

Dieng has said if elected he will renegotiate accords with Spain that allow illegal Senegalese migrants to be sent home, a deal viewed as a betrayal by many in Senegal, from where tens of thousands of youths have tried to breach "fortress Europe", setting sail for the Canary Islands in fishing boats.

MOUSTAPHA NIASSE (AFP)

Leader of the Alliance of Progress Forces (AFP), Niasse is a trained diplomat. He served as foreign minister under President Abdou Diouf and also as prime minister for a year under incumbent president Wade.

Niasse, 68, has also served several times as a United Nations envoy in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

IDRISSA SECK (PDS)

A popular former prime minister, 48, Seck was a protege of Wade and for years number two of the ruling party until a rift with the president led to his sacking in 2004. He spent more than six months in custody on charges of threatening state security, widely seen as an attempt by Wade to eliminate a political rival, before being released last February.

Seck graduated from a Paris political science institute and also took classes at Princeton University in the United States. He once pledged on his Web site "I will be president some day!"