Many are those who say they were left hungry or even very disappointed, having watched the interview that President Bassirou Diomaye Faye gave Senegalese journalists. The interview, the new Head of State’s first media appearance, in the tradition of addressing the media to draw lessons from the first hundred days of governance and set a course, was eagerly awaited. But Bassirou Diomaye Faye did not enlighten his compatriots any further. Doubtless he was not helped by the obsequiousness shown by the journalists throughout the interview. They even went so far as to thank Bassirou Diomaye Faye for preferring to address the national media first. Which head of state in the world has had the audacity to grant his first interview to foreign media?

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

Our colleague from Rts, Fatou Sakho, who chaired the floor on this occasion, may have given the impression that the questions were already agreed upon. This may explain why no questions were put to President Bassirou Diomaye Faye about his perception of the irredentist conflict in Casamance and the solutions he would recommend to resolve it. This issue, a painful thorn in Senegal’s side, remains the world’s longest-running armed conflict, with its macabre toll of victims. Yet it remains a taboo subject for Senegal’s Head of State (see our column of 22 April 2024).

President Faye’s radio silence

Is he hiding his game? We have no idea of the timetable for the institutional reforms that the Head of State is planning. However, it did not escape the public’s notice that at the Council of Ministers meeting on Wednesday 10 July 2024, the President of the Republic referred to « a legislative agenda that should aim to revise the Constitution and specific codes ». We will therefore not know when the National Assembly will be dissolved and early legislative elections held, even though President Faye stresses that he has not yet been able to keep his promise to abolish the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (Cese) and the High Council of Local Authorities (Hcct), because he does not yet have a parliamentary majority to carry out the necessary constitutional reforms. No more referendums for constitutional reform?

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

It is hard not to believe that the President of the Republic is playing a ruse, which should fool no-one. The dissolution of the National Assembly is a foregone conclusion, as no one could imagine that a new regime could continue to cope with a National Assembly of 165 MPs, in which it has no more than 40 who are affiliated to it or favourable to it. In other words, President Faye is simply waiting to sign the relevant decree until he reaches the deadline by which the Constitution authorises him to dissolve the Assembly.  This would give him the advantage of surprising his political opponents, who would not be sufficiently prepared for early elections. By carefully avoiding mentioning the prospect of a dissolution, he avoids adding to the anger of MPs against Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, who refused to make a general policy statement before the National Assembly. The disgruntled MPs had, it should be remembered, brandished the threat of passing a constitutional law that would deprive the President of the Republic of any power to dissolve the National Assembly.

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Bassirou Diomaye Faye is keen to calm the quarrel between his Prime Minister and the National Assembly. But he is laboriously trying to justify the indelicate posture of his Prime Minister and has, with staggering clumsiness, endorsed the heresy that there would be more quality in the debates if Prime Minister Sonko were to make his Declaration of General Policy before a popular jury of experts rather than before the Members of Parliament. The other incongruity is that President Faye seems to be stubbornly refusing to bow to the memory of the hundreds of young illegal migrants whose bodies have been swallowed up or washed up by the oceans.

When the President submits to his Prime Minister

Bassirou Diomaye Faye left everyone stunned when he advocated balancing constitutional powers by transferring powers from the President of the Republic to a Prime Minister who, incidentally, is not elected by the People. He has shown himself so submissive to Ousmane Sonko that one could hardly believe his sincerity. He declares himself ready to carry out the necessary reforms: « I told him that it will be done when he wants.” Explaining his discussions to ease the tension between the Prime Minister and MPs, Bassirou Diomaye Faye said: « The Prime Minister has backed down from his intention to make a declaration before a popular assembly on 15 July 2024. May na ma ko » in Wolof (which can be translated as: « he conceded it to me » or « he accepted it for me » or « he did me the favour »). Everyone will appreciate the significance of the words.

President Faye is also ready to cede his chair to him or install him in it at the first opportunity. « I encourage Ousmane Sonko not to glance at the chair, but to take a good look at it. » President Faye has gone out of his way to please his Prime Minister. He says so without batting an eyelid and casually adds that he has always worked for Ousmane Sonko to occupy the presidential chair and will continue to do so. « He is competent for the job. He’s doing an excellent job. If I’ve been able to make such an international agenda, it’s because he’s the best Prime Minister in Senegal. » He is nevertheless keen to stress: « The Prime Minister was not my friend. Only, before our release from prison, when we were allowed to sit down together, I suggested to him that we should become friends from now on to avoid being divided by people. We were partners in a project, in all loyalty, but we weren’t friends. » We no longer know who to believe between the President and his Prime Minister, because Ousmane Sonko spoke of their legendary friendship to the point that he had found a nickname for him. For his part, Bassirou Diomaye seems to force the features of this friendly relationship, to the point of caricature, in the smallest of details, such as: « Today he came to pick up my son to spend the day at his house »; or « After the Council of Ministers meeting, we stay for more than two hours to talk to each other. » French President Emmanuel Macron claimed friendship with his Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, who once replied, « When you have a president and a prime minister, their relationship is not on the register of friendship. » In Senegal, Abdou Diouf and Habib Thiam seemed to have understood this.

Read the column – President Diomaye Faye, visiting Bamako and Ouaga, sees the counter-model!

President Faye ended up appearing blasé, almost disinterested in his position. He says he isn’t running after anything, doesn’t claim any precedence and doesn’t pretend to impose himself in any way. A sort of King of England who wouldn’t even mind being bowed down to. Frankly, if it hadn’t been for his budding weight, you’d have thought that President Faye was starting to get fed up with it all. Even in his personal life, he says he makes do with almost nothing and « lives happily with very little ». Certainly, such a paradigm or principle of life is the antithesis of the ambition to develop a country and create wealth for its people. This would certainly explain why the government’s economic and social policy tends to drive down prices in order to save households a few pennies, rather than creating a dynamic that will enable people to earn more.

Those who were waiting or hoping for the President of the Republic to set a course and define a clear economic and social policy will have to wait and see. Bassirou Diomaye Faye was even surprisingly cautious about the much-vaunted « Project », the reference framework for economic policy, which has turned out to be a pipe dream. For once, Bassirou Diomaye Faye did not use the term that has become Pastef’s catchphrase. His economic policy will consist of raising domestic resources through taxation. This is undoubtedly a good approach, especially as taxation is an essential instrument of economic policy that should be handled with dexterity and caution, because in this area « rates kill totals ».

Lapsus or a guilty conscience?

The choice of Professor Abdoulaye Bathily as « Special Envoy » to mediate between Ecowas and the countries of the Alliance of Sahel States, which have broken with the Community organisation, seems to have been a wise one. Pr Bathily has the reputation, the interpersonal skills and the address book needed to succeed in such a mission. But the issue of the declaration of assets seems to be a haunting one for the new President of the Republic. He has stumbled over the expression of « Declaration of general policy » several times, using the term « declaration of assets » instead. A revealing slip of the tongue. The interviewers could no longer avoid asking him to publish his declaration of assets. In these columns, he and his Prime Minister were challenged to publish their asset declarations (« Diomaye-Sonko, dare show your assets », 8 July 2024). Bassirou Diomaye Faye, visibly embarrassed by the challenge, simply passed the buck to the Constitutional Council. He is well aware that the Constitutional Council has never taken it upon itself to publish declarations of assets. The institution has always left it up to elected Presidents of the Republic to do so of their own free will. Why should it do with Bassirou Diomaye Faye what it did not do with Macky Sall or Abdoulaye Wade? So, we won’t know how much Bassirou Diomaye Faye’s assets are worth and what they are made up of. The Head of State can therefore, without too much risk, allow himself to be indignant that hectares of land have been given to individuals at Mbour IV, pretending to forget that in a publication of his assets (an exercise he was not obliged to undertake), made before the presidential election, he had revealed that he was the beneficiary of allocations of several hectares of land in the same region. Let there be no mistake: if Bassirou Diomaye Faye wants to keep his promise, all he has to do is take it upon himself to publish his declaration of assets.

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In addition, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, without seeming to touch it, did not fail to pass the buck to his predecessor, Macky Sall. In particular, he said that he had not find the budget allocations for the political funds. Does he mean the allocation for the first quarter of 2024 or the entire annual budget? Clarification is essential, especially as, when he took office, the government congratulated itself on the previous government’s scrupulous adherence to budget execution rates in the first quarter of the year. According to the budget execution report for the first quarter of 2024, published by the Ministry of Finance and Budget, « State budget expenditure (based on authorisation) amounted to 1,358.71 billion CFA francs, representing 24.30% of appropriations at 31 March 2024 ». The paradox remains that, after declaring that he did not find the political fund appropriations on the spot, President Faye tried to justify the relevance or necessity of such a chapter of the financial allocation by invoking the social benefits that he had already granted. But with what funds was he able to grant such largesse? It will be recalled that Macky Sall used the same line against his predecessor Abdoulaye Wade, claiming that no political funds were available when he arrived. This was on 28 June 2012 in Ziguinchor, at a press conference for the national media, to take stock of his first hundred days at the helm of Senegal. No doubt the economic and financial situation was not the same, because during the presidential election, Abdoulaye Wade was telling anyone who would listen that the state coffers were empty and that if he was not re-elected, civil servants’ salaries would not be paid by the end of April 2012.

Bassirou Diomaye Faye told those who were worried about the Head of State’s prolonged and costly stay at a hotel since his election that he eventually returned to the Presidential Palace at the end of June 2024. He had only stayed at the hotel because he needed to have some work done to adapt the Palace to his own social living conditions and because his private home did not offer sufficient security guarantees.  Comparison is not reason, but Abdoulaye Wade and Macky Sall continued to stay in their private homes while work was being carried out at the Palace. They live in the same neighbourhood as Bassirou Diomaye Faye. Tell me, is it this little bourgeois area, Fann-Mermoz-Point E, that still provides us with heads of state?

By Madiambal DIAGNE / mdiagne@lequotidien.sn 

  • Translation by Ndey T. SOSSEH