The very fact of maintaining chiaroscuro is an admission. Authoritarian drift begins when the prince can make the linguistic sign say what he wants. The Senegal skiff looks like a boat that has lost its course.
The President of the Republic in December 2019, when asked whether he would run for a third term or not, replied with a neither yes nor a no. In his address to the nation on December 31, 2022, he did not raise the issue. However, all the actions he has taken since then indicate that he is preparing to go (Lu Defu Waxu). Let us not impugn his motives, some would say, for the time being he said nothing definitive. To a question whose only possible answer is no, since the Constitution is clear on this point; the very fact of maintaining the chiaroscuro is an admission, at least of a temptation or evaluation of the chances of success of such an undertaking. By this single attitude of maintaining the vagueness on an issue that involves the destiny of the whole community, the contract with the nation, which was signed in 2012 when it was sworn in, and renewed in 2016 after the referendum on the Constitution, has already been severed.
This non-response has the effect of taking the Senegalese people hostage and keeping them in the waiting, while their supporters occupy the media space and, as in 2012, try to make us understand that words no longer have the meaning that is theirs. Authoritarian drift begins when the prince can make the linguistic sign say what he wants. When “No person may exercise more than two consecutive terms”, no longer means, “No person may exercise more than two consecutive terms”. And it is to this interference of meaning that the presidential camp is engaged. Because here no matter the length of the mandate, it is the consecration of the latter that is limited to two. That was the purpose of our fight in 2012 against Wade’s third term. To establish a rhythm of alternation inscribed in the marble of the Constitution that ensures a democratic breathing, a renewal of the governing elites, the alternation of the projects of societies and the peaceful transmission of power.
What a setback, if we were in the same situation in 2024 as in 2012! All this for that! Unfortunately, Wade had already experienced the process. Appointing judges who are committed to his cause to the Constitutional Council, dropping his propagandists in the media and his jurists who try by a juridical sophistication (with this idea that constitutional law is complex and esoteric), to make acceptable a reading of Article 27 of the Constitution that is semantically, ethically, politically, legally, and thus trample on the ground the fundamental text that binds us and sets the rules that govern our living together. Only one individual, he was President of the Republic, cannot confiscate a power entrusted to him by the Senegalese people in terms that were a refusal of a monarchical devolution of power, a third mandate and a desire for social justice and accountability. The ultimate consequence of such an act is to desecrate the Constitution in the collective unconscious. Any community to make a whole whole, is based on rules that it puts above itself, above partisan ambitions and private interests in order to guarantee the pursuit of the general interest. The Constitution reflects the rules that form the basis of our political community and ultimately the people are the supreme constituent. To say to the latter «dear people you have not understood what you want, we the masters of constitutional science have understood better than you that no one can, does not mean in this specific case, no one can»In addition to ignoring the collective intelligence of Senegalese regarding the meaning of their political history, it is a holdup of our collective will. What the people want (at least on this issue), they clearly expressed in 2012 in the streets and in the ballot boxes.
Mr. President of the Republic,
The Senegal skiff looks like a boat that has lost its course and is wandering in the fog. A derelict ship sailing in troubled waters and preparing to face future storms. It is a ship that has lost some of its superb, whose captain seems to no longer see the clouds piling up, inhabited by the dream (which we legitimately lend you) of seeking a third mandate and no matter if this attempt plunges us into instability. No matter the 10 deaths that this fight for democratic breathing and alternation of power cost us in 2012; no matter if you yourself repeated several times urbi and orbi, that you had locked the Constitution; that the mandate the Senegalese gave you in 2019 was your second and final mandate. It does not matter that the Sahel region is unstable and that the island that Senegal constitutes cannot afford the luxury of opening the pandora’s box. There are many reasons to avoid that this desire to seek the mandate too much, does not embark us collectively in a most risky adventure.
Recently, we have witnessed a systematic unravelling of our societal and democratic achievements. Dikes yielding one after the other. Inexorable rise of the waters. François Mancabou died in the premises of the national police. Two gendarmes, Sergeant Fulbert Sambou and Chief Warrant Officer Didier Badji, who disappear under turbulent circumstances, including the first found dead, visibly drowned, and the second of whom we have no news. Cartoonists (Papito Kara) hijacking newspapers on the internet, imprisoned, some for liking posts with smileys. Pape Alé Niang, a journalist imprisoned for doing his work (informing) and being the subject of judicial harassment. A big mute that no longer is and that lets leak sensitive files, so that no one ignores them. Young people who are questioned during demonstrations and asked for their surnames; and when they are Casamançaise-sounding, they are arrested and taken into the salad basket, to the custody. An APR activist who calls for the defense of the third term with machetes, a deputy who promises to march on our corpses for the re-election of his champion in 2024. Citizens who are intimidated for the crime of opinion and who are put through the prison cell, each in turn, as if for a spin. After the March 2021 riots, 14 people died, some killed at close range (one of the scenes was filmed); no open investigation, no trial, no liability located to date. A pain of families compensated with bundles of CFA, which they accept for lack of better entrusting themselves to God and to the fatality of destiny. A deterioration of political mores rarely seen in this country. A National Assembly became a fair and an arena of rags. They insult each other wildly, they strike a woman member of Parliament, and even worse, they find a way to justify the unjustifiable, and therefore the despicable patriarchy that is gangrene in our society. Deputies, with the exception of a few, who do not live up to the demands of the republican debate entrusted to them by a people, who by voting in the last parliamentary elections as he did, wished to balance speech and power in the National Assembly and see its fundamental concerns calmly relayed and debated. Instead, we are witnessing in this place and in the public space a general degradation of speech that has become violent and abusive.
We witness in disbelief the erosion of what has made our country a nation that has been able to avoid ethnic-religious conflicts, military coups, civil wars in a post-colonial Africa struggling with multiple upheavals. This solid social fabric, despite its vulnerabilities, is the result of a slow collective construction, made of social consensus, political struggles, citizen and trade union struggles, democratic advances conquered of high struggle, interreligious and inter-ethnic cohabitation preserved by a cultural and social engineering, shared values; but also by the slow and patient construction of social and political institutions playing their role. It is one of these institutions – the cornerstone, the Constitution, of which you are the guardian and guarantor.
Mr. President of the Republic,
Your predecessors have each in their own way, despite the limitations of their mandates (and Wade’s abortive force), helped to strengthen Senegalese democracy by contributing their contribution to the difficult edifice. Yours, at this moment in our political history, is to take an act that will irreversibly make our nation a major democracy, which has definitively resolved the question of the peaceful transmission of power, and that of an alternation inscribed in its texts and especially in its practices and traditions. So that finally the elections become moments of debate on the destiny of the nation and more those of clouds big of risks, hovering over our heads.
When there will be demonstrations and unrest against a third mandate – and it is to be expected that there will be if you show up – because there is no reason for the Senegalese people to accept in 2024 what they had refused in 2012 (Remember that it was this refusal of the third term that Wade wanted that brought you to power in 2012); and that human lives will be lost, because you have overarmed the police and the gendarmerie. You will bear the responsibility. We expect you to announce that after being elected twice to the head of Senegal; that you will not run for office a third time in the presidential election; and that in doing so, you will respect your oath, that you restore to the Senegalese the honour they have bestowed upon you by entrusting to you their destiny for two terms, and that you consolidate and preserve our democracy.
