My God, it’s like a curse. They do everything wrong. The Council of Ministers of 17 July 2024 appointed more than 80 people to important positions in the state apparatus. This overloaded or plethoric cohort in a single session, a first in the history of Senegal (except in an administrative movement to fill the basic echelons of the territorial administration), is going to pose major problems for the installation of the people thus appointed. The Inspectorate General of State (Ige) will not have sufficient staff to carry out, in addition to its day-to-day tasks, the formalities required for most of the new appointees to take up their duties as quickly as possible, although other new appointments are being made on a daily basis, some of which will also require the involvement of the Ige. It should be noted that the IGE has only 33 staff, 9 of whom are on secondment or available for work. In recent days, this State audit body has been engaged in auditing and verification missions in more than 50 State structures. Who is going to install the new heads of public bodies appointed in this way, especially as some people who were also appointed weeks earlier are still waiting to be installed in their posts? The appointments thus reflect a systematic replacement of post for post, whereas the rationalisation of State services was supposed to lead, as is the case with the government architecture, to groupings or reorganisations of national directorates and agencies. The logic seems to be to avoid reducing posts in order to find enough to satisfy a political clientele.

Read the column – Diomaye, President despite himself

A number of other problems emerge from the list of appointments. In particular, there are cases of people who do not fit the job profile. People in their first job are being propelled into strategic government positions where, in the most normal case, they could have been no more than ‘trainees’ in their initiation phase. There are also clear cases of nepotism and conflicts of interest. The media are certainly not wrong to ridicule the situation, saying that the new regime, which promised calls for candidates to fill essential public jobs, has ended up making ‘calls for nepotism’, or to put it more accurately, ‘calls for family’.  In the end, we realise that no serious investigative effort was made before deciding on certain appointments; unless political commitment, social proximity or ‘blood ties’ took precedence over any other criterion of competence or probity or even respect for proper procedures. Revelations are coming from everywhere about scandalous cases of family nepotism or usurpation of titles or qualifications.

Other appointments are the result of pressure or other forms of blackmail. Some militants, impatient at not being invited to the table, had begun to show mood swings and brandished public threats of debunking on social media. It was amusing to see the immediacy of certain appointments, following the virulent outbursts of these frustrated people. The highest authorities of the State, in this case Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko and President of the Republic Bassirou Diomaye Faye, seem vulnerable to these pressures. They have had to shout about not giving in to pressure and blackmail, but in the end, it seems to have paid off.  The tumultuous history of their political party has included dark phases during which certain militants and officials were entrusted with unmentionable roles and missions. The poor performance of Lawyer Ngane Demba Touré, Managing Director of the Somisen mining company, on the set of Tv5 Monde on 2 July 2024, is enough to convince us that the criterion of competence does not seem to govern certain appointments. 

Read the column – Diomaye-Sonko, Dare to Show your Assets!

All this stands in stark contrast to the professions of faith in virtuous, high-quality governance. We have every right to be more demanding of the new authorities. We have seen how virulently they have criticised the ‘clannish’, ‘family’, ‘nepotistic’ and ‘predatory’ management of Macky Sall and even Abdoulaye Wade and Abdou Diouf. 

With touching and persuasive sincerity, Ousmane Sonko and Bassirou Diomaye Faye had promised ‘rupture’, the advent of a new homo senegalensis to run public affairs. They’re the sprinklers. You can guess the smile on my face, because I had crossed words with certain people when they were contemptuous of the appointment, for example, of a certain Aliou Sall, Macky Sall’s younger brother, as Director General of the Deposits and Consignations Fund. Aliou Sall’s skills and pedigree do not suffer from the slightest complex.  But the case of Aliou Sall’s appointment had so damaged Macky Sall’s presidency and was the weapon with which his regime’s detractors were able to get at him, that I ended up publicly suggesting that Aliou Sall should resign from his post. I made the same suggestion about Mansour Faye, minister and brother-in-law of the President of the Republic. The approach was certainly not fair, but it was the price we had to pay. So, the new regime cannot be expected to do worse than that of Macky Sall or Abdoulaye Wade. Certainly, the men and women who said that nepotism was to be avoided now find themselves entangled in the failings of their predecessors.

Every move they make is an enormity

The new government authorities should learn to measure the impact of their actions. The Minister of Sport, Youth and Culture skipped the Senegal Football Cup final on 13 July 2024 to attend a reception organised in honour of a French footballer by the French ambassador in Dakar. The famous Aurélien Tchouameni was in Senegal to launch charity work.  Minister Khady Diène Gaye’s gesture was greatly deplored, especially as the year before, on 28 August 2023, Prime Minister Amadou Ba personally presented the Senegal Cup winners’ trophy to the Jaraaf of Dakar team. The Minister’s flippancy was also noticed on 20 July 2024, when she did not deign to represent the government at the ceremony to present the works of the Cameroonian ambassador to Senegal. On the same day, she sent a terse message stating that she was unable to attend the 3pm ceremony due to a trip to France scheduled for the evening. As a result, no Senegalese official was present at the ceremony, which was dedicated to Ambassador Jean Koe Ntonga, dean of the diplomatic corps and who has been in Senegal for almost 30 years. Some people in the audience were quick to point out that if it had been an ambassador, even from Liechtenstein, the minister would have had to be in the photo.  Reluctantly, the Prime Minister sent a letter stating that he had appointed Mrs Khady Diène Gaye to represent him at the ceremony. As if to salvage the situation, former ambassador Paul Badji and Colonel Momar Guèye, President of the Senegalese Writers’ Association, paid heartfelt tributes to the Cameroonian diplomat. In the same vein, our new political elites should make a greater effort to ensure representation. ‘I see, you take yourself too seriously to care what you wear and you put on, let’s say this sort of misshapen jumper (…)’, the line in the cult film The Devil Wears Prada.

Read the column – Tell me, who does Ousmane Sonko respect?

What’s more, it cannot be said often enough that what may come out of the mouth of an opponent is forgivable, but cannot always be forgiven if it comes out of the mouth of an official member of a government. This is the case, for example, of the Minister for the Environment, Daouda Ngom, who had nothing better to say in the columns of Le Quotidien newspaper on 15 April 2024 than ‘Macky Sall was more than a king. He did what Mouhamed VI cannot do in Morocco’. It is fortunate that the Moroccan side did not deign to pick up on this diplomatically incorrect statement. Prime Minister Sonko publicly attacked a foreign head of state, in this case Emmanuel Macron, at a public conference in Dakar on 16 May 2024.  On 4 July 2023, Birame Soulèye Diop, then chairman of the Yewwi askan wi parliamentary group, accused President Alassane Dramane Ouattara of having poisoned the candidates from his party whom he had nominated to run for his succession. This statement angered the people of Abidjan’s Ebrié Lagoon. During President Faye’s visit to Abidjan on 7 May 2024, some Ivorian officials made a point of asking for news of Birame Soulèye Diop. It’s a bitter pill to swallow.

Read the column – 450 billion, Ofnac served up on a silver platter!

In addition, the chaotic installation of the new legislature on 12 September 2022 saw a veritable circus in the corridors of the National Assembly. The new MPs, from the ranks of the Yewwi askan wi (Yaw) coalition, made a spectacle of themselves, smashing the furniture, blocking the vote and taking the ballot box with them. Scuffles of an unprecedented severity in the Hemicycle were deplored.  Never before has the National Assembly seen such scenes of violence, including the beating of Amy Ndiaye Gniby, a member of parliament who was several months pregnant. Public opinion was outraged and the ugly example was shown on every television channel. Senegal was ashamed. Never again, they swore and promised. The unlimited indulgence of the Senegalese would have us believe that this reprehensible behaviour was simply that of disgruntled or bullied opponents. But once the Pastef party and its supporters came to power, we saw them behaving as they always do: insulting their political opponents and threatening them with physical violence. Now the incorrigible MP Guy Marius Sagna is once again drawing attention to his antics, by showing a lack of respect for his colleagues in the ECOWAS Parliament. The videos are making the rounds of Africa and the world. Could it be that MP Sagna’s rationale is one of crude provocation, with a view to creating incidents? What have we done to God to deserve to have our political elites put us to such shame? In a moment of astonishment, we launched a cry from the heart: ‘Merit our governance!’, column of 10 August 2015 or ‘But Macky, where are going?’, column of 28 May 2012.

So, who put the idea into President Bassirou Diomaye Faye’s head that to prove his sovereignty, he should hold a press conference exclusively with Senegalese journalists? The international media were banned from the Head of State’s first press conference to take stock of his ‘first 100 days’ at the head of the country.   The approach is clumsy and meaningless. Indeed, it is as if what was said at this press conference would only be of interest the Senegalese public. Of course not, and the good proof is that President Bassirou Diomaye Faye chose to change the language of communication to French, instead of Wolof, in the part of this interview where he was talking about diplomacy and international cooperation.   Bassirou Diomaye Faye seems to be seeking to innovate, at the risk of being iconoclastic in the funniest of ways. He surprised everyone by giving a speech in English to Charles Michel, the President of the Council of Europe, who was visiting Dakar on 24 April 2024. His interlocutor’s mother tongue is French, and French remains Senegal’s official language. So, what could have prompted President Faye to risk such a stunt, which drew laughter from the public?

In the classroom, there’s always one over-zealous pupil, who snaps his fingers loudly and shouts ‘Me Sir! Me Sir!’, with such aplomb that the teacher prefers to ignore him, convinced that he has the answer, choosing instead to question the guy at the back of the class, trying to make himself forgotten.  And then, one day, he points to the sucker. The teacher was stunned to discover that the pupil had not learned his lesson. Ousmane Sonko and Bassirou Diomaye Faye portray an image as pitiful as it is ridiculous. But in the end, the chatterbox ends up being the class rep, who takes particular care to write down the names of the chatterboxes in the teacher’s absence. He became the informer who denounced those who might have cheated, which didn’t stop him from cheating. The aim is to be top of the class.

By Madiambal DIAGNE / mdiagne@lequotidien.sn

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