Candidate-lining and Kairos strategy for the 2024 presidential election.

The Senegalese justice has just pronounced the finality of the conviction of Ousmane Sonko in a case of “youth corruption” for which he was sentenced to two years in prison on June 1, 2023. He was stripped of his electoral rights and removed from the electoral rolls.

Constitutionally speaking, the leader of the Pastef – currently in prison for another case – will therefore not be able to compete directly and personally in the presidential election to be held on 25 February 2024.

This disaster scenario was predictable since Ousmane Sonko decided to engage in a real tug of war with President-in-Office Macky Sall, especially from the previous presidential election of 2019 where he came third with 15% of the vote. His simple, sharp and radical speech allowed him to touch, galvanize and sensitize a large part of the Senegalese youth who was disappointed by the unfulfilled promises of development, of professional success and future prospects in one of the few democracies present on the African continent.

With his speech perceived as anti-system and populist, the charismatic Ousmane Sonko has become a direct threat to the regime in place whose President promised last July 3 not to run for a third term. Wise decision that must be respected, saluted and applauded because it may avoid a remake of the Gabonese scenario of a post-election coup whose immediate cause was the 3rd term of ousted President Ali Bongo on August 30.

The leader of Pastef also risks questioning the interests of foreign multinationals operating in the country. His book “Oil and Gas in Senegal” published in 2017, suffers no ambiguity about Ousmane Sonko’s desire to restore economic sovereignty over the country’s natural resources. Caught between the regime’s relentless justice and foreign economic interests, the Senegalese youth candidate has very little room for maneuver. His detention decided on July 28, 2023, followed by a hunger strike begun since July 30, and then the dissolution of his party “Pastef” signed on July 31 are a cascade of events on which Ousmane Sonko has no longer taken. He lost control of his political agenda in a completely different regional context from that of March 2021 where – after only 5 days of incarceration – thousands of young supporters took to the streets to get their leader released from prison. The international press had massively relayed the images of this popular fervour.

Two years later, the situation has completely changed. The spotlight of the mass-International media turned away from Senegal to focus on the much more juicy and selling news of the successive military coups in Niger and Gabon and a possible military confrontation at the initiative of ECOWAS to restore the President Mohamed Bazoum in Niamey.

Ousmane Sonko and the executives of his party do not seem to have adjusted their geopolitical algorithm to 6 months of this crucial electoral deadline for the country. They must absolutely get their act together, in which case they risk missing their appointment with History.

Because after 5 weeks of hunger strike, it became clear to any warned observer that this “biological weapon” will not get Ousmane Sonko out of prison, nor will it help him to obtain his qualification to participate in the next presidential election. Should we resign ourselves and abandon a political fight lost in advance? Certainly not.

There is a salutary and simple option that the Senegalese opposition has not yet explored and that I had the privilege of setting up in Algeria in March 2019. It presents several assets, the main one being to put the leader Ousmane Sonko back in an active political role and not to keep him in a position of unproductive and suicidal victimization for him, for his party and for the millions of young people who support him.

Ousmane Sonko: President in three acts
Act 1: It is for Ousmane Sonko to quickly adouber a wise and politically astute candidate who will play his double of confidence in the presidential election of February 2024.

Act 2: If this adoubé candidate wins the next election thanks to the mobilization of all the opposition, the youth and the diaspora, he will also grant – the same day of his enthronement – a general amnesty for political prisoners and the creation by decree of the post of vice-president to be entrusted to Ousmane Sonko.

Act 3: Immediately thereafter, the President-Understudy will resign and Ousmane Sonko will constitutionally become the new President of Senegal.

To succeed in this winning political scenario in three acts, Ousmane Sonko must first regain all his strength and the fullness of his lucidity by immediately ending his hunger strike which has become politically ineffective. Because to persist on this dead end road, he risks to know the same sad fate as that of the Irish activist-deputy of the IRA Bobby Sands that the British Prime Minister of the time Margaret Thatcher let die on May 5, 1981 after 66 days without eating.

Indeed, the responsibility of a politician is both different and more important than that of a simple activist who acts according to his own convictions and values. A political leader must also develop a global vision of the societal and geopolitical issues that surround him. And above all, it must possess the art of the kairos, that is to say, be able to both swarm the elements of language most appropriate to its electoral targets, adapt its strategy to the changing news and act at the most appropriate time, where the window of fire to win the political battle is strongest.

To Ousmane Sonko to demonstrate to the Senegalese people – in the coming weeks – whether he is a real visionary politician or a simple anti-system activist.