“The story catches up with the filmmaker, Moussa Sène.” This is how the response of Abdou Latif Coulibaly, Minister Secretary General of the Government to Senegalese filmmaker Moussa Absa Sène begins. The latter had made a tribune in the form of a letter addressed to President Macky Sall, concerning the situation of tension that living Senegal at the beginning that the deputy Ousmane Sonko Leader of the Pastef was accused of repeated rapes and threats with a weapon by a masseur in the name from Adji Sarr.
My dear Moussa Sène Absa, it is from the start of my remarks that I would like to be clear with you and naturally well understood by all: I have no intention of answering on behalf of His Excellency, President Macky Sall , whom you challenge, as a free citizen (partisan actor?), following the letter that you bring to his attention in the press.
For me, it is not a simple detail, when you specify your age: sixty-three (63) years old, indicate yourself. We are both of the same generation, that of children born to five or three before the end of colonial nights. I’m happy, at over 65, to see that I have the advantage of age over you by far.
Thus, I give myself the freedom by basing myself on our African cultural values, in order to be able to use the birthright and to formulate fraternal remarks on your words. Moussa, my dear brother, I find it difficult to understand the relevance of your argument. I don’t think I misread you. Believe me, even wrapped in a poetic and pleasant style, this argument hardly hides its emptiness, in order to avoid talking about the astonishing fragility of the elements serving as a framework for the text.
Factual consistency is lacking. However, one cannot understand the object of the reflection which you propose in debate, if you persist in concealing all the facts which constitute the fabric of the political history of this country on the basis of which you rely to propose a postulate , make statements and draw conclusions. In this respect, the conceptual basis of the reflection being flawed, your analysis has taken quite a blow.
The conclusions of your analysis, which tries to present itself under the gilding of a distant and objective essay, are they fatally disqualified. Your basic premise is based on the idea that Senegal, since its existence as a state, has never experienced such a flawed political atmosphere, because it is filled with tension. Everything in the political competition, you suggest, is happening today, more than it did yesterday, in a context heavily laden with threats and potential violence.
With your age, you were six in 1962, it is understandable that you do not have clear memories of the events of December 17 of that same year. Only, knowing you brilliant and perspicacious filmmaker keen, at least from the point of view of political theory, you cannot state, with a very calm conscience what you write, for example: Moussa you write: “Never I never felt so many cleavages with nauseating consequences cross people’s minds “.
Moussa, what do you mean by that? That you had succeeded, with an enormous feat, to speak only of recent cases, in avoiding breathing the air of the country on June 23, 2011. As perhaps, you had also decided to close your nostrils so as not to feel the smells of grenades thrown at populations contesting Wade’s third term. Why be so oblivious to my dear brother Moussa?
Our eminent historians, especially scholars of contemporary Senegalese political history, have produced enough on the subject. I would like to see you produce a film on political violence in Senegal from the colonial period to the present day. Moussa, very fraternally, as you produced a documentary on the tragic and painful case of Me Sèye.
With the age which is yours you cannot say that with a conscience in peace as the reality lived during the last fifty (1960-2011), before the arrival of Macky Sall to power attests to situations of so strong political tensions. that they sometimes produced violence with innocent citizens as victims.
You are of exceptional dimension, a fertile filmmaker, an accomplished creator. You have the mind of a creator and it certainly happens to you, by your fruitfulness of mind, to mix factual reality and fiction. All things that make your work more sublime. It won’t be insulting to say that you wrote your text with the spirit of the artist who is sometimes allowed to take a lot of freedom with the facts. I would like to remind you or perhaps let you know that on December 17, 1962, Senegal could swing into war between two political camps which faced each other and had it not been for the wisdom of the officers of the Armed Forces and the Gendarmerie, we could have known the first political crisis followed by violence. Long before this date the power in place pursued with unparalleled aggressiveness all those who claimed to be part of the African Independence Party (PAI). The repression has been terrible and many families in this country have been the victims.
The fratricidal political struggles in the city of Saint Louis were a perfect illustration of this. This is where the first political assassination took place in independent Senegal. You were undoubtedly young to remember that.
If this is indeed the case, you can be excused. On the other hand, you can remember the sequence of 1968 with the massive arrival in Dakar of the action committees of the Senegalese Progressive Union. These one-party militias called from the interior of the country to come to the capital, in order to beat up and smash striking students. For an intellectual, moreover a consecrated filmmaker, you have no right to ignore all these facts.
You also cannot forget the massacre of six police officers on the Boulevard du Centenaire on February 16, 1994. The families of these massacred police officers who celebrated the sad anniversary of these horrible assassinations do not think, far from it, as you do.
My dear young brother, as I said to you, your analysis is weak and without consistency, even if you wanted to make a serious text intended to disturb the conscience of the authority. You could have been more incisive and better listened to if you had avoided the partisan trap that we claim we who are inserted.
Unless this is the case for you without the opinion being informed. It is your absolute right to be. Never have I witnessed such intense tension in our once peaceful and laughing society.
Moussa, I dare not believe that you consider that the Casamance region and its populations are not part of Senegalese society. They, I imagine, weren’t as laughing as you claim in your text.
I know that you would never be able to echo the theses of the rebellion. However, considering that Casamance has been laughing during these thirty, even forty last laughing years, you forget, there too, that since December 1983, this part of the country is in the grip of a terrible war of secession which is remembered us a few days ago.
My dear Moussa, to finish I will tell you that I have indeed read the arguments developed jumbled up to try to disqualify public policies and the work initiated since 2012 by the Head of State. I admit that I was struck by the daring claims made on difficult-to-master economic and social development issues and issues. To be honest, hasty judgments are obvious, rarely avoiding being over-the-top and gaudy. But as they say, any excess, they say, is harmful.
All the demonstrations attempted prepare for a sensational entry into the current debate: the rape case pending before justice. This sentence in your text clearly betrays the subtlety that you are trying to assert: “Mr. President … Do not get involved in over-the-belt quarrels!” (..) The fight is elsewhere ”. You enter this debate to make the thesis of the plotted conspiracy prosper, without proof obviously, if not to do, like all the others who defend this thesis, in, the suspicion, the insinuation, the calumny, even the defamation. A futile attempt to politicize a private conflict between two Senegalese citizens with certainly a criminal connotation, but which nonetheless remains a civil matter. I will have no other words for you on this subject. My dear brother, let us pray together that God will allow us the lucidity to keep wisdom and give us the means to preserve peace and stability in this country. No offense to all the ominous birds.
Abdou Latif COULIBALY
