The ad hoc committee of the National Assembly set up to decide on the lifting of the parliamentary immunity of MP Ousmane Sonko, sent the question to the plenary. After refusing to respond to the summons of the said committee, the leader of Pastef now sees his immunity at the mercy of the majority deputies. By Senegalactu / EnquetesPlus
Disarmed, disillusioned, resigned. Very clever is the one who can guess how Ousmane Sonko can feel before the accelerated procedure that must lead to the lifting of his parliamentary immunity. In one week, an ad hoc commission was set up and it decided to seal the fate of the leader of Pastef-Les Patriotes in plenary. And in the face of the majority that has been guiding the choices of the National Assembly since the beginning of this affair, we can consider that it is only a matter of time, before its immunity explodes.
Of the three members of the minority parliamentary groups included in the ad hoc committee, only Sheikh Bara Doly Mbacké participated in the session held yesterday. In fact, it was the chairman of the Freedom and Democracy parliamentary group who, when he left the plenary session, learned that “the ad hoc committee had finished its work and had transferred Ousmane Sonko’s case to the plenary”. Not without specifying that he is against it. “ We are against that. For us, we must not waive Ousmane Sonko’s parliamentary immunity. We will defend this line in plenary’.
If Sheikh Bara Doly Mbacké was the only non-affiliated deputy to take part in the work of the commission, it is because Moustapha Guirassy and Sheikh Bamba Dièye resigned during the weekend. The other representative of the Freedom and Democracy Group and the non-aligned group sent a letter to the chairman of the ad ho c committee on Saturday in which they regretted the functioning of the committee. According to them, it “shows to sufficiency that the National Assembly is strengthening and devoting its inferiority to the executive power through the public prosecutor’s office which dictates its conduct”.
Taking part yesterday in the plenary session of the Ministry of Economy, Planning and Cooperation, Sheikh Abdou Bara Doly advised the president of the Freedom and Democracy Group to imitate his colleagues opposed to the lifting of the parliamentary immunity of the leader of Pastef. For Bokk Guiss Guiss (opposition), “Ousmane Sonko refuses to answer the commission, so he does not recognize it. All members who support it should resign. To participate in the work of this commission is to give the discharge for the condemnation of Ousmane Sonko’’.
The Chairman of the Freedom and Democracy Parliamentary Group will not resign from the ad hoc committee
A field on which Sheikh Bara Doly Mbacké will not follow him. The chairman of the Freedom and Democracy parliamentary group wants to be clear: “We will not do the politics of the empty chair. Party leaders put me in charge of this group. They are Abdoulaye Wade, Pape Diop, Mamadou Diop Decroix and Mamadou Lamine Diallo. They have a great deal of experience in the National Assembly and have not asked me to resign from the ad hoc commission.”
For the parliamentarian, the most important “is to stay together, to fight for it to be remembered that the opposition had mobilized against the holding of this plenary”. If the date of his dress was not revealed, Sheikh Bara Doly Mbacké informed that Aida Mbodj did not appear before the commission which met in camera. The member on the non-aligned list was designated to defend Ousmane Sonko. The latter, accused of rape and death threats, had dismissed last Friday, the gendarme came to hand him the convocation of the ad hoc commission.
Among his many supporters in the political opposition, the leader of Pastef can count on the mayor of Mermoz/Sacré-Cœur. For Barthélémy Dias, faced with a “conspiracy” that tends towards a political trial, we must turn to the people. When he was the victim of the same procedure for waiving parliamentary immunity in 2016, the socialist knew that he had “already won the battle of opinion”. Citing the former president of Senegal, Me Abdoulaye Wade, he advises: “We do not win a political trial before magistrates. We win a political trial before national opinion.”
If Ousmane Sonko seems to be on the right side of this line of defence, the facts tend to prove him right, according to the words of the socialist mayor of Mermoz/Sacré-Cœur, who recalls “that all the immunities that have been lifted have been lifted in relation to political conflicts”.
Source : Senegalactu / EnquetesPlus