I carefully read the report “Senegal: an African democratic model in decline” published by the Afrikajom Center. The reports of civil society organizations are necessary in order to document the current facts and to offer keys to interpretation which, by their distance from the political dispute, shed more light than partisan positions.

But this report, which is intended to be a luminous contribution to Senegalese democracy, is in reality a compendium of errors, manipulations and frivolities. Miscellaneous.

On page 6, it is said that the Head of State of Senegal, as president of the African Union, « temporarily joined the big leagues ». Regardless of the ignorance or perfidy of the author, Senegal since independence, headed by its successive presidents, has never left the banquet of great nations. Our country is a powerful voice of global diplomacy at the heart of major issues such as in Palestine, Haiti, the Comoros and elsewhere. Senegalese have led the IAAF, the OIC, the FAO, UNESCO, to name a few organizations. Since the Ezulwini consensus, Senegal has been a serious candidate to one day occupy a seat as a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

On page 9, the report stresses: “A deterioration in the transparent management of elections.” As a reminder, the cities of Dakar, Thiès, Ziguinchor, Guédiawaye, Rufisque are led by opposition mayors. Of the 165 deputies in Parliament, 83 are from the opposition. The power is in the minority in the National Assembly and, moreover, there has been no contestation of the elections filed in the Senegalese courts.

On the same page: “Today the unresolved question of the third term, which returns like a sea serpent, has contributed to creating a climate of tension, violence and unease never known since 1990.” The author of the report should step away from virtual screens for a while and immerse himself in readings of the political history of the past thirty years. What about the events of 1994, 2011?  The deaths of 2012, March 2021?

On page 15, the report mentions a victory for candidate Macky Sall “in the controversial February 2019 elections”. How were they controversial? Can the author inform us about the disputes as well as the appeals filed for this purpose?

On page 17, the report states: “Senegal is currently going through the most serious and complex democratic crisis, without doubt, in its political history and its electoral history since François Carpot and Blaise Diagne in 1914. »  Does the author ignore the events of December 1962, the violence of May 68? The violence that led to the state of emergency of 1988? The adventures that led to the assassination in 1993 of Lawyer Babacar Seye?

Yet in the general introduction to the report, on page 10, the same author contradicts himself and writes that on February 17, 1962, Senegal experienced “the most serious crisis in the political history of Senegal”.

In page 18, according to the report: « Those who fought for the third term in 2011-2012, the fight that got President Macky Sall elected, are the same political parties and coalitions that are pushing against a third term for President in 2024, in violation of Article 27 of the Constitution.” He’s right, but he’s incomplete. I suggest that next time he also cite Ministers Aïda Mbodj, Habib Sy and Bara Gaye, supporters until the end of President Wade’s 3rd term and today opposed to a possible 3rd presumed candidacy of President Sall.

Still on page 18, the report tells us that : “Ousmane Sonko, presidential candidate of 2024, cornered by several trials, could be dismissed from the Presidential if ever he were sentenced to more than three months under article L29 paragraph 3 of the new Electoral Code of July 2021.” This sentence is inaccurate and the author knows it, but wishes to confuse for the man whose faithful lackey he has been for several years. The July 2021 amendment was welcomed by virtually the entire political class as it introduces the election of the mayor by direct universal suffrage and the elimination of sponsorships for Locals. The provisions the report dishonestly alludes to are A29, A30, A31 which have been in law since 1994.

Afrikajom Center also pours into the discrediting of republican institutions to « sell » abroad the image of a bleeding country. This is how we must understand that on page 18 the report attacks with such irresponsibility the General State Inspectorate, an elite body in which the best civil servants in Senegal serve. Of Ige, he says it “looks much more like a political instrument in the hands of the state to exert pressure on political dissidents in the opposition”. The Ige in service or retired have served or are serving their country with rigor and discretion. These respectable fathers and mothers do not deserve these vile calumnies. Returning to the Prodac file, and surely reassembled because of the conviction for defamation at first instance and on appeal of its leader, the author evokes, on page 20, an “interim report” of the Igf. This is one more lie. An Igf report on this file, definitive or provisional, does not exist.

On page 23, the author, in whom modesty is clearly not the greatest quality, writes speaking of President Sall: « He comes to power carried by a massive, hybrid citizen movement, made up of organizations from civil society, political organizations and independent personalities from various walks of life under the leadership of the Raddho.” I tried in vain to suppress a fit of laughter… On page 23, we read that President Sall appointed to head the Senegalese Human Rights Committee “a strong personality from civil society”. This personality that Alioune Tine adorns with all the virtues is… himself, Alioune Tine…

The activist knowingly tells untruths to reinforce a macabre record and further tarnish the image of our country in front of an international opinion unaware of the subtleties of local politics. Thus, on page 31, he agitates the tragic case of the two gendarmes Fulbert Sambou and Didier Badji and writes: “Badji’s body was fished off the Senegalese coast. That of Sambou, is not yet found.” This sentence is symptomatic of the absence of seriousness in the work and its high degree of manipulation which borders on illegality. Indeed, the gendarme found dead is not Didier Badji as the report claims, but Fulbert Sambou. Then he suggests that the second missing soldier is deceased, which until proven otherwise is misinformation.

On page 40, the author points out: “The number of seats in Parliament is divided almost equally between the opposition and the government.” Despite this, on page 48, the author sells us a ferocious tropical dictatorship close to the precipice. All this is not serious.

I suffered to get to the end of this document which is a model of everything not to do in terms of political reporting. The content is lapidary, the approximations and factual errors numerous, the untruths abounding. The author ventures on concepts that he does not master; for example, the Constitutional Council whose role he clearly does not know, the port of Ndayane, multilateral diplomacy… I nevertheless welcome the effort to propose a report, even if the document is scientifically arid, stylistically catastrophic and morally tendentious.

When Alioune Tine goes to his office in the morning, that is to say on Twitter, he goes about his daily business: vilifying our country, smearing its institutions, defending its master and telling a whole bunch of inaccuracies about all the current topics. For months I have been watching him in the media, coming out of muddy concepts to aggressively maintain the rent of the tension on which he has lived for decades.

In turn, he evokes hazy terms that mean nothing, such as « civil transition », the « criminalization of the opposition », the « People’s Congress », which he is proud to repeat, with a smirk, without to realize that he keeps sinking into the abyss of ridicule. His latest discovery is the “Peace Building Agenda”. Brief…

Alioune Tine is too politically marked to hope to be credible from now on. And he defended all the violence, insults, ethnic and anti-republican speeches of his « leader » without outlining the slightest disagreement. It would be better for him to assume his activism so as not to confuse the public debate, or to distance himself because by dint of compromising himself he can no longer assume the function of arbiter of the democratic game.

On the first line of the Afrikajom Center document, it is written: “This report is the first of its kind.” I hope it will be the last…

By Hamidou ANNE / hamidou.anne@lequotidien.sn

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