Who could have imagined that Senegal of “emergence” would give birth to a regime of tyranny? The bait is simply the presidency for life. The Pastef is only the face of a people that growls with anger. By Pierre Sané

Call for an uprising?

Let’s be serious!

The insurrection cannot be attributed to one political actor or another. No. What triggers the insurrection is tyranny.

Insurgency is like when a healthy immune system produces antibodies when attacked by an unhealthy and malicious virus. The healthier the immune system (social cohesion, solidarity, resilience, spirituality…) the more firm and unequivocal the response is. For a democracy, it is a survival reaction. It is enough to read the history books or better to reread the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948: “Considering that it is essential that Human Rights be protected by a regime of law, so that Man is not forced, as a last resort, to revolt against tyranny and oppression…”

No need for a so-called “call”.

Tyranny, on the other hand, is a political project, particularly unhealthy and malicious. Can we “learn to live with such a virus”? No, of course not!

Should we do it? Out of the question!

We have to get rid of him.

Who could have imagined that Senegal of “emergence” would give birth to a regime of tyranny?

First of all, the definition of a tyrant (from the indispensable Wikipedia): “The nature of tyrannical power is indeed recognized by the fact that the tyrant, without abolishing the laws, places himself above them. The perversion of this regime is also due to the fact that «tyranny cumulates the vices of democracy and those of the oligarchy», because of the tyrant’s love for wealth and his hostility towards the people he disarms and enslaves. Tyranny is the arbitrary and absolute power of a sovereign, person or group of persons with supreme authority, characterized by a government of oppression and injustice.”

Is Macky Sall a tyrant in the making?

“I will reduce opposition to its simplest expression.” (and not bring the whole nation together in its diversity).

This is the political agenda that Senegalese President Macky Sall unveiled to his fellow citizens at a press conference in Kaffrine on April 16, 2015. That day Macky Sall made public his determination to wage a merciless war against democracy.

When I saw that pronouncement, I couldn’t believe it. I was out of the country. Internationalist friends and comrades from Turkey, Ireland, Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire and others have called me to confirm that this came from the mouth of the President of the Republic of Senegal, a constitutionalized Republic as secular and social democratic for 60 years. And section 58 “guarantees political parties that oppose government policy the right to oppose”.

Senegal? A democracy under construction had I always told them.

But, they answer me, Macky Sall controls the legislative, the judicial power; he is Prime Minister, he appoints all his constitutional advisers, he commands the army, he does what he wants with your money including buying the most expensive train in the world (French train of course). It decides on the composition of the lists of candidate deputies of its coalition, appoints the heads of the list of local elections, writes the Constitution, changes the rules of the game before the elections, chooses its opponents in the elections, assigns itself the role of master of prosecutions, has the administration.. And … decides the colour of the buses!” (brown-beige of course).

“Pierre, can you still give us the Senegalese democratic exception after all this?”

Pitifully, I say, at least we’ve never had a coup d’état.

“Oh yeah, yeah? Did your president-poet not orchestrate the first independent African coup d’état against the President of the Council of Ministers in 1962, rigging his trial and sentencing him to life imprisonment (Mamadou Dia)?”

Coming back to the subject of Macky Sall, they tell me (they become ruthless):

«Reduce to its simplest expression?

Dictionaries give us a list of synonyms: submit, destroy, destroy, break, defeat, compel, subjugate, tame, crush, subdue, enslave, crush, consumer, shred, corner, curl up. 

Reread the list above and you will see how it captures all the actions of President Macky Sall against the opposition since March 2012.”

Indeed, the war against democracy has intensified.

Already, after having won Idrissa Seck, he plastronnait that he now gathered 85% of the electorate. And now what does he do? It seeks to stifle the voices of the remaining 15%. Fifteen percent more and it can become monarch and tyrant.

Thus, Macky Sall aims to grant himself literally all the powers without counter-powers and without opposition.

But of course, it will lack the essential powers, the key element, namely the sovereign power to beat its own currency, to supervise the banks and to decide the amount of money in circulation as well as the interest rates. This is so that we can pursue equitable development policies, create a true economy and end poverty.

Because this power belongs to the Governor of the Central Bank (BCEAO) whose real boss is Bruno Lemaire, French Minister of Finance.If Macky Sall is a true «warrior» then he goes to win this trophy. Nothing is easier than being brave when you have guns and bullets in front of kids with rocks. But facing the master, we bend the back! Enslavement, when you hold us.

That is why Macky Sall will always be only a tyrant by delegation with the latitude however to impose by force and violence the perpetuation of his stay in power. The bait is simply the lifetime presidency.

But we all know that if you combine presidency for life with oil and gas the disaster sets in: wars, widespread corruption, poverty, inequality, repression all kinds of nepotism. Just look around us: Gabon, Congo, Chad, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea… That’s why all these friends call me: “Senegal must not join this club.”

Senegal does not deserve this destiny and will not accept it. As for the manifest will to break the momentum of Pastef? It’s a waste of time because Pastef is just the face of a people who are growling with anger.

Macky Sall made the mistake of confusing the results of a controversial election with the standing people.

If he does not learn the lesson and persists in his mistakes then yes the insurrection will be at the rendezvous and it will be televised. No need for any «appeal».

However, it would be instructive to make a phone call to Blaise Compaoré.

psane@seneplus.com

The paradox of the current events is that while they are serious, they look like a grotesque farce. The feeling that Macky Sall is setting no limits is worrisome. Reacting hot is rarely a good idea. One can understand that, in the heat of the action, politicians are forced to do so almost all the time: in a way, the slightest doubt can be fatal to them. But today, with the “Sweet Beauty” affair, the republican ethic is so ridiculed that the urgency of sounding the alarm is also imposed, and urgently, to all. By Boubacar Boris Diop

The paradox of the current events is that while they are serious, they look like a grotesque farce. Thus, the most watched man in Senegal, so wary that he never registers a suitcase in the hold during his plane trips, would have chosen a public place to rape, weapons in hand, a young masseuse of 21 years. She claims to have been sexually abused on several occasions in this place where surveillance cameras are installed, we are told. But above all, not once has the accuser of the leader of Pastef been heard calling for help or struggling to put an end to his “ordeal”. After all, the incriminating facts are supposed to have taken place in a house that does not look very big and where live a dozen people, including the family of the owner of the Sweet Beauty.  

Fortunately for Sonko, the apprentice-sorcerers with a slightly disturbed mind did not foresee that the latter would not enter their game. His speech, with remarkable clarity, showed that cynical people lurking in the shadows exploited the inexperience – not to mention the psychological fragility of Adja Raby Sarr – and his financial distress, to destroy a man more perceived as a mortal enemy than as a mere political adversary.

The height of amateurism was to imagine that, in our country as it stands, such a case could remain strictly private. It only took a few hours for it to become so political that it relegated all the other subjects of national life, including a pandemic each day that is a little more lethal. The polarization, in a context of deaf popular discontent, is obviously at the expense of the Macky Sall regime. We don’t see with such a bad start what miracle his henchmen could convince anyone of Sonko’s guilt. In any case, whatever their alleged evidence, it will be rejected with contempt by the court of opinion, the only one that works in a democratic country. Nor is it necessary to be a Sonko supporter to guess that the leader of Pastef will emerge politely strengthened from this event. The support that converges on him from all sides will not contribute much to legitimize him as a major political figure. Until now its political importance was mainly due to the impetus of a youth which had made it the depository of its hopes. Here it is, perhaps earlier than expected, taking the thickness of an essential actor of the public scene.  

But in these times of high social tension, what is at stake goes far beyond the political destiny of such or such individuality. This is the dignity of Senegalese democracy, whose values are so joyfully trampled upon. The truth is that those who should have protected it are simply soiling it. No obscenity or oddity is lacking in the appeal: it is a question of a woman raped, very real but become a ghost immediately her complaint lodged; of the sperm of an honest father of family – let us forget for a moment the politician – conveyed nightly, apparentlyhe went to a laboratory; to a massage parlour owner who was the victim of moral torture and attempted corruption to make him change his testimony; to a Public Prosecutor, Bassirou Guèye, of a relentless docility to political authority; the perfectly illegal summoning of Deputy Ousmane Sonko to the “Research Section”, that is to say in contempt of his parliamentary immunity; and, equally illegally, the encirclement of his home by tanks of combat.

As if all this were not enough, the National Assembly is convened this Thursday, February 11, 2021 to deliver it to justice that, as sad as it is terrible, the litigants no longer take seriously. 

The total control of the Executive over the Judiciary and the Legislative shows that in this country, all the powers are concentrated in the hands of one man, the President of the Republic. These institutions are supposed to constitute a triangle, but this one is of a very particular kind in that it has only one side.

Senegal is not, however, the awful dictatorship that some complain to portray, and in any case, this pervasive presidentialism is not new. However, it has never been so dangerous and caricatural. The feeling that President Macky Sall is not setting any limits is quite worrisome. By acting in such a cavalier manner, he shows how little attention he pays not only to the common Senegalese but also to his allies.

This last point deserves a moment’s attention.

Some of Macky Sall’s companions are known and respected for having fought their lives for the progress and sovereignty of Senegal. Whether they decided at some point to support Macky Sall doesn’t really matter: the real political life is made up of these back and forth and cross-breeds, it’s only the delicious chaos of political politics in the Tropics. Nothing too bad about it. What remains more difficult to accept is that such far-sighted intellectuals of great strength of character give today – on the outside at least – the impression of being literally paralyzed in front of the Head of State. In a normal situation, it should be able to say from time to time that there is a red line that some of its allies, regardless of their electoral weight, would not allow it to cross. The Ubuesque situation we have been living in for a few days is typical of a country where no one dares to whisper the slightest reservation in the boss’s ear.

And it’s not that nobody wants to. Indeed, it may well be that even in his party, executives and activists, regardless of their hostility to Ousmane Sonko – one can perfectly understand it – are embarrassed to see their leader shoot themselves so often in the foot.

To explain his erratic behavior, several precedents are quoted these days, from Karim Wade to Aminata Touré, passing by Khalifa Sall, all suspected of eyeing the presidential chair, a serious crime if it is. Someone should have told the President that the jug is going to the water and in the end it is going to break. The clumsy attempt to eliminate Sonko, doomed to failure, risks reminding him bitterly. The leader of Pastef could take advantage of the feeling increasingly shared that too much is too much.

It is possible that the strategists of the power have wanted, by this provocation, to test the capacities of resistance of Pastef, to ensure that, as the propaganda of the regime repeats it enviously, that it is only “the party of social networks”. The result must have been disappointing: in a very short time, Senegal found itself in an almost insurrectionary situation not only in certain Dakar neighbourhoods but also in cities such as Louga, Bignona, Mbour and Ziguinchor, this list is very likely to grow if we do not put an end to this trousers as quickly as possible. Last but not least, the beginning of internationalization that we are witnessing makes political sense in view of the love coast of Pastef in the diaspora.

In short, this inconclusive experiment should bring Macky Sall to his senses. Above all, it gives him an unpleasant foretaste of the serious obstacles he will have to overcome to impose a third candidacy. It will simply be mission impossible, even if the examples of Ouattara and Condé could incite him to persist.

The only thing Macky Sall should be doing is resigning himself to the idea that you can’t burn a country to the ground on the pretext of wanting to continue to lead it. Between April 1960 and 2021, tens of millions of sons from Senegal lived there and still live there. Among them, only four had the honour of being its head of state. Millions of others are living very well the fact that they have never had to preside over any country and many of them are no less capable than Macky Sall. On the contrary…

bdiop@seneplus.com

Thank God. Fortunately, Diary Sow came back to us without any damage to his body. No one knows what is happening or will happen in the head of this frail young girl. The internal injuries exacerbated by our judgment can be more devastating for this girl. Let us all bear in mind that it was weakened by the premature death of a father whose presence at his side and in the family was more than indispensable. A parent for whom she certainly nourished like any other son/daughter, the wildest ambitions.Therefore, we must guard against opening a trial against her, with ferocious prosecutors, trying to convince less lenient judges to take her to the scaffold. 

We recall the words of journalist Madiambal Diagne in his excellent text entitled «Come back Diary, you have your place among us», at a time when an entire country was still terribly distressed by the disappearance of the young girl. I quote: Diary Sow probably did not flee for a reason that would damage her reputation as a good girl or to save herself from a forced marriage. It is possible that she simply freaked out as happens to many young people of her age, prey to doubts, uncertainties, anxieties, fear of failing, phobia of disappointing her world. We asked too much of that poor girl. Student «brilliant», best student of Senegal two years in a row (2018-2019), and admitted to the Baccalaureate with the best mention. She had become (in her own defense?) the mascot of her country (…) Her life became a success story.” Too heavy to carry, for a child as young as twenty. No adult among us, of the age to be the father of this girl, would have so severely judged Diary Sow, as some could have done and certainly would not have done if their own child had been placed under the same circumstances in the same position as Diary Sow.

I wonder why there is so much lack of leniency and compassion on the part of these censors, the same ones who often allow themselves to make judgements that are too judgmental, condemnations that are so categorical, from which sometimes there is a clear hint of malice. And all this malice seems to reflect bad feelings, a priori on people who don’t even know the people they judge. Let alone the facts on which they are voting.Sentences that are usually quickly handed down are by no means the result of a rigorous factual analysis carried out without emotion and with a great distance, compared to the people involved. 

Today it is the young student who is sometimes targeted with a severity that is difficult to explain. I could not resolve myself to the idea of a fatal outcome. Diary did indeed return, as the nation begged him.What a relief, when this Wednesday, January 20, 2021, the sponsor of the student, Minister Serigne Mbaye Thiam, informed the Council of Ministers, to have received an address of Diary Sow in which the latter reassured him.My happiness was unspeakable, when Serigne Mbaye Thiam made me the friendship to inform me on the night of Saturday evening, January 20, 2021, that he had just found Diary Sow in Brussels. Serigne Mbaye Thiam knows how attached I am to this young girl, and even more since I had the advantage of presiding over the dedication ceremony of her first novel. A ceremony in which she seemed to warn, when she said, “It’s very important for me to tell people as they are, not to limit myself to the surface. I tell myself that there is no angel, no demon. Everyone has shadow zones, everyone has a mask that he wears according to the circumstances.” I admit that when I read the writings published by Serigne Mbaye Thiam by the young girl and in which the minister gives some details, to explain the reasons for her disappearance, I thought I found in the words the author of the book “Sous le visage d’un ange”, in which Diary Sow managed to narrate a beautiful story, the tragic life of her heroine Allyn. This one does not reflect, far from it, the life of Diary, but she can inform on the sensitivity of her being by reading the rather tormented letter that she sent to her godfather. She says somewhere that she didn’t run away because of the pressure, let alone a doubt about her abilities.She also points out that she did not go crazy and that she did not disappear to follow with a love passion, as suggested by some of her compatriots. On this last point, she would, I think, have assumed with modesty, certainly, but without any shame, I believe, any love relationship. Everything indicates to believe, judging by her sensitive and sensual writing;when she narrates in her novel the romance of Allyn her main character. Very enigmatic character, ambitious, with an inextinguishable thirst for freedom to which Diary Sow seems very attached, even infatuated, is not her.Certainly! Only this heroine, Allyn, still allows to read in the state of mind. 

Reading through Allyn the state of mind of Diary Sow, I say. Without looking for similarities or similarities between the main character of the novel Allyn and Diary Sow, we can nevertheless note that the idea of leaving, disappearing, may have long moved in this girl, even before her entry in the preparatory school. The disappearance of Diary Sow and the story told in his novel on Allyn, which disappeared twice in the author’s text, suggests a curious (incidental) coincidence Allyn suggests: “I want to trample on all the prohibitions, think outside the box, refuse all these agreed rules so that nothing ever moves. I want to live without any compulsion. After having known only the unfortunate side of life, the time has come for me to come. (…) I too. Whatever sacrifices this entails”. I do not believe that it is daring to make such a reading from the game that she makes play to Allyn who remains on the start at all stages of her existence in the novel. In his tormented letter, some think, sent to his godfather, Diary Sow explains to him: “to be gone freely, and describes his disappearance as a kind of salutary respite in his life, a little break, to regain his spirits”.

The words of the girl sound like an echo to the following words of the philosopher of the Middle Ages, Seneca reported by Denis Dambre in an article published on January 14, 2011: «to find the tranquility of the soul», the Stoic philosopher Seneca advised one of his disciples, Serenus, to alternate solitude and the life of society and wrote to this effect: “Besides, it is necessary to withdraw a lot on oneself. (…) Let us mix up the two things: let us alternate solitude and the world.Loneliness will make us desire society, society will bring us back to ourselves; they will serve as an antidote to each other, solitude healing our horror of the crowd, and the crowd our disgust of loneliness.” The intertextuality that structures her first novel, the continuous movement that she operates in her beautiful writing between philosophical and literary thoughts, the constant movement made by the brilliant Diary Sow between these two poles of knowledge leaves no doubt about his companionship in his readings. Is not his disappearance an attentive ear to Seneca and his recommendations to the wise? And, the same Seneca, to add to the place of his dear friend Lucilius: “Your body, an object eaten away by time, must endure its loneliness without you, and your spirit, on the other hand, must begin its most intimate relationship with you, so that you will never be alone since it will associate with the wise”.At his age there is no doubt that Diary Sow had already started to associate with the sages, whom we are talking about here, since high school itself. 

She was in their environment, before working with them at the Lycée Louis le Grand, with risks: fatigue, weariness, even overwork, even if the girl tries to reassure us, from this point of view. The risk was real. And in the face of all this, let us pray together, after the happy return of the girl, that the idea suggesting that tragedy is the natural destiny of geniuses may be denied. Please, let us not send this girl who is neither an angel nor a demon to the scaffold! Let us try to contradict Carl Jung…

By Abdou Latif Coulibaly Minister, Secretary-General of the Government of the Republic of Senegal