It will be difficult to believe in the hunger strike that you have started, according to your allies, since the end of July 2023. We want to believe you but we have reason to doubt you, not because we have seen you eating or that we have information contrary to what yours say. But we doubt it because you have accustomed us to lies about your situation. Wasn’t it you who claimed to suffer from a tough backache, since your early childhood and which your mother treated with boa’s grease, which prompted you to go for treatment at Sweet Beauty between the expert hands (?) of Adji Sarr?  That back pain disappeared as if by magic. 

Wasn’t it you who claimed in front of the cameras of the world that you didn’t suffer from any pathology and that everything that would happen to you would be because of Macky Sall’s regime? Last week, your lawyers produced a most calamitous health check. According to them, you suffer from comorbidities such as kidney failure, high blood pressure, heart problems, diabetes and who knows? That’s a bit too much, isn’t it, for an aspiring President of the Republic? Who to believe, you or your lawyers? In any case, there is a liar in the group! It will be just as difficult to believe you when you alarmed your world of an assassination attempt with a toxic product poured on your body by a person who finally turns out to be your obliged but also because the treating doctors ended up confessing deception. Since then, you no longer mention in your communication this alleged assassination attempt that you had announced more than two months earlier. 

The Little “Trojan Horses” of Ousmane Sonko

Your everyday speech is riddled with lies and you are so versatile that you contradict every day what you said the day before. It will be even more difficult to believe in your hunger strike because, after more than 15 days of an announced hunger strike, you have regained your alertness to comment on the possibility of a military intervention by ECOWAS against the putschists in Niger. You would have fallen into a coma a few hours later, only to regain your senses again, as easily as you would have lost them.  And even though you have finished showing the world that you are a true epicurean, adept at lucre and the good life and that therefore you love life, that you would probably not let yourself die in such a sordid way.

It would be hard to believe that you decided to engage in a hunger strike, after watching videos in which you dissuaded some of your supporters from using hunger strike as a weapon, which you strongly condemned. How consistent would it be to dissuade them and do it yourself?  Unless you’re the type to always say the opposite of what you do. Thus, one would certainly believe the opposite when you say that you are on a hunger strike. You have exhibited such strong religious faith in yourself that one cannot imagine you initiating a suicidal action prohibited by your religion. And, unless you’re a jerk and if so, no one would believe you either when you say you’re on a hunger strike.

These Ministers Can Consider Themselves Lucky to Have Only Been Sacked

It will still be difficult to believe you after the awkward exit of your wives to be alarmed at your fate. The poor, knowing their spouse on a deathbed, did not find it necessary, in the least in the world (unless they wished, in their heart of hearts, to let you die), to call on you to stop your attempt of suicide but rather strive to charge Macky Sall or poor Adji Sarr. What villain would then prevent you from eating? Everyone manages their belly, right? Have your wives finally understood that you are stubborn and that they have a duty to save you from yourself, so as to beg for the forgiveness of Macky Sall, whom you never stop defying?  If you subscribe to their approach, it is certainly that you are a “paper tiger”. If your wives acted alone, then consider that no one believes in you anymore and no one is willing to sacrifice their lives for your follies.

Do you want to concur with Adji Sarr?

So, we have good reason to doubt you and your hunger strike. But never mind! Let’s think the absurd by taking the hypothesis that you would go on a hunger strike. What would you be trying to prove? It will be impossible for you to believe in your courage because we saw you scurrying in front of the police, whom you nevertheless defied. We have also seen you show yourself docile like a lamb, more than once, in front of elements of the defense and security forces who took you out of your vehicle to take you to the destination of their choice. We have seen you show a staggering cowardice like all the other autocrats, asking others to give their lives to save you from imprisonment because of your personal turpitude, while taking great care to spare your own life and the comfort of your family. We are going to play credulous by wanting to believe for a moment in your hunger strike and we would tell you very frankly that the final outcome of such an action would not change the face of Senegal let alone the world. Graveyards are filled with heroes and people who thought they were needed. 

Senegalaiseries: Madiambal, Will You Allow Me the Floor

The death of Bobby Sands on May 5, 1981, following a 66-day hunger strike, has yet to find a solution to the Irish irredentism conflict. Worse, the struggle has faded and the anniversary of this tragic death now goes almost unnoticed in Northern Ireland. For a time, people will make a point of the blooming tomb. The image of the abandoned tomb of Thomas Sankara in the municipal cemetery of Dagnoën in the suburbs of Ouagadougou, provides information on the relationship of people with their heroes.

You threatened that “Macky Sall would kill you or that you would kill him”. So, there, you are doing the job for him! Ousmane Sonko, you will fade even more quickly from memory, especially since you are not fighting a just fight; you are in a personal fight to save your own skin but not your people. Bobby Sands, Mahatma Gandhi and others pursued noble causes but did not seek to avoid prison for acts which would be committed in a brothel like the one in which you had gone of your own free will while hiding from the whole world, except Adji Sarr.

Do you think that thousands, or hundreds or a few dozen people will follow you in this crazy initiative? We can doubt it because we would already see them standing up to prevent you from going to prison or to lift the blockade of more than 55 days imposed on your home by the police for security reasons. You had proclaimed that if your arrest occurred, hundreds of deaths would be counted. Is it necessary to make you realize that we rather deplored the deaths when you were free but that since you have been in the dungeon, no one has stupidly given their life for you?  In other words, when you are free, Senegal is in tumult and perils; but when you are put out of harm’s way, peace and tranquillity reign in the land. Can you imagine if you would continue this bullshit to let yourself die? Do you want to leave to posterity the image that you were a common rapist without giving yourself the opportunity to explain yourself to clear your honour?  Would you want, by a disastrous evasion, to vindicate your accuser who defied you, fulminating with assurance that you would rather die than put yourself in front of her in a public trial? Come back to your senses, come back from your illusions and stop your nonsense which doesn’t deceive many people! No doubt some little minds will suffer and imitate you, please have the leniency for once to spare them! Here, I saw one of your Pastef lieutenants heating the canvas to encourage you on your hunger strike, in a posh restaurant in Dakar. My mocking, rather, accusing smirk embarrassed him enough!

Stop this stupid adventure, which will inevitably lead to your loss, as Karim Wade did, after five days in 2015! Stop this crazy adventure, as did former workers from Air-Senegal, Ama Senegal, Sias, Sotrac, Africamer (2009-2011), students against Wade’s candidacy (2011), fans of footballer Elhadji Ouseynou Diouf who demanded he be called to the national football team (2010) or former blue caps bodyguards of opponent Abdoulaye Wade (2009)! With that, you won’t prove anything and you will have « burnt yourself with the fire you lit »!

If really your strike to the « end » is simply a new attempt to manipulate public opinion, be aware that you will be even more ridiculous in the eyes of your opponents. State authorities have the means to know at all times your true state of health because you remain in detention and remain subject to the rules of the prison administration. And, enjoy your meal! This is only advice, that you will arbitrate in the court of your conscience.

By Madiambal DIAGNE / mdiagne@lequotidien.sn

  • Translation by Ndey T. SOSSEH / Serigne S. DIAGNE