(adds details, background throughout) By Diadie Ba DAKAR, March 5 (Reuters) - Senegal's opposition Socialist party lodged an appeal with the Constitutional Court on Monday calling for the annulment of last month's presidential polls which handed President Abdoulaye Wade a new five-year term. Wade won a comfortable first-round victory with 56 percent of votes in the Feb. 25 polls, nearly four times as much as his nearest rival. Senegal is widely regarded as a bastion of democracy in volatile West Africa. "We have come to submit to the clerk of the constitutional court an appeal to annul the whole of the ballot," said Aissata Tallsall, spokeswoman for Socialist candidate Ousmane Tanor Dieng, who came third in the polls with 14.9 percent. "We have serious complaints which point to a lack of transparency and irregularities in the whole process." In 31 of the 34 departments of Senegal, envelopes had been sent for counting without the seal of the National Vote Counting Commission, thereby contravening electoral law. The Constitutional Court now has until Monday to rule. Wade received 1.9 million of the 3.4 million valid votes cast, or 55.9 percent, according to the National Vote Counting Commission. The president, who is in his 80s and has ruled the West African state since 2000, credited his comfortable victory to strong support in rural areas which he said were ignored by the opposition. Monitors from West Africa's regional organisation ECOWAS said the vote was sufficiently free and fair, although Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres said state media gave Wade and his campaign overwhelming coverage. Wade's critics say he has failed to deliver on promises to improve living standards in the former French colony, most of whose nearly 12 million people live from farming and fishing. They point to the drama of thousands of desperate young Senegalese who have been risking their lives in flimsy fishing boats to try to reach Europe via the Canary Isles.
