I’m reminded at the moment of this beautiful line by René Char: « Lucidity is the closest wound to the sun ». The election has finally taken place. The result is indisputable: the fascist camp is going to govern Senegal. This election has once again shattered the fanciful theories about the electoral regiq*ster and the transparency of elections. Our democratic system is so efficient that it can allow anyone to be elected.

Even worse, for the first time, a puppet president will have been elected to lead the destiny of this great people. There was no programmatic debate, in keeping with the hysteria of public debate over the last three years. There was a referendum following the polarisation of the political field, at the end of which a puppet with a puppeteer enthroned above him won. The history books will have to explain that a man who didn’t even have the dignity of campaigning on his own behalf, a man who didn’t take responsibility for himself and his candidacy, was elected, a man who recognises that he has a leader, was elected President of the Republic.

Read the column – This 24 March, democracy will dictate its law

For the first time, Senegal is offering itself to a movement that takes advantage of the infrastructure of democracy without believing in it; a movement that has deliberately opted for insurrection as its mode of political action.

They will have to embody the institutions they have desecrated, command the police, army and gendarmerie they have insulted, and preserve the justice system they have vilified. They will have to accept that they are ruling over ruins…

Read the column – Senegal at the GECF: Continuing the Story

There are many deep-seated reasons for this tragic turn of events. But there are two that I think are worth remembering: the Republican opposition gave credibility and legitimacy to a fascist party by forging alliances and governing municipalities with it. The majority, on the other hand, hastened this brutal end by giving the impression every day for three years that it was preparing for fascists to come to power. The amnesty graciously offered to insurgents and criminals is the latest act in a clear desire to entrust power to them and plunge the country into a downward spiral of uncertainty. The decision to take out the leader and his candidate in the middle of the campaign was a way of giving them a boost, of helping to make unsavoury people into unsinkable heroes in the eyes of young people. After the many calls for insurrection, arrests and legal proceedings, if they emerge from the infernal machine of the repressive state apparatus in the clear, for the public it’s either because they hadn’t done anything anyway, or because they were stronger than the state, so power had to be given to them.

This electoral defeat is also that of people who, for three years, refused to get involved in the fight against the desecrators of the Republic when they were in charge. Amadou Ba is one of them. He is a courteous and decent man, but as Minister and Prime Minister, and quite simply as a political figure, his voice was never heard in the fight against the populist hydra, even during the worst episodes of violence.

Read the column – Mati Diop, Symbol of «Senegal That Wins»

On Sunday, I spent most of the night on the streets of Dakar. I passed jubilant young people perched on Jakarta motorbikes or cramped into vehicles with shrill horns. The country was longing for change, but what it got was a plunge into the abyss. Following in the footsteps of the United States, Italy, Brazil and Argentina, another major democracy has fallen into the populist trap, against a backdrop of rising identity peril in West Africa. I was expecting it, and I kept repeating it to friends who were very sceptical, even mocking my supposedly morbid fantasies.

Populism rises from the anger of the oppressed against the unfulfilled promises of the Republic. It aggregates frustrations and flirts with sad passions. It can also soar through the cowardice or complicity of the elites – politicians, intellectuals, business leaders and executives – who think they are feeding the beast so they can join in the feast once they are in power. They will be the first victims of an obscurantist and intolerant movement which, in ten years, will have shown that it hates reason and contrary debate, and therefore freedom and emancipation through knowledge.

The next victims of this new regime will be the masses, who took to the streets on Sunday. The immense hopes nurtured by ten years of far-fetched and untenable proposals such as the Cfa franc, the billions that will fall from the sky, the kicking out of foreigners and the nationalisation of whole swathes of the economy will be dashed, because these people are neither competent nor honest enough to govern a country.

Read the column – In the Soft Tropical Dictatorship of Senegal

The adventure we are embarking on will lead the country to moral ruin and further fracture the national community. And the promises that will never be kept by a President under tutelage, a notorious incompetent, unprepared, will fuel an anger that will be fatal to him, his leader and his camp.

A new regime was installed. It will bring together a host of opportunists, haters and revenge-seekers. This regime, which has promised an anti-system, revolution and, incidentally, the execution of former presidents of the Republic, now includes in its ranks Karim Wade, Aminata Touré, Birima Mangara, Mary Teuw Niane, Moustapha Guirassy, Aïda Mbodj, Habib Sy, Pape Samba Mboup… I’m not talking about the strange characters – schemers, charlatans, Islamist activists – whom the Senegalese will have to trust from now on to run the affairs of state.

Since Monday morning, a progressive and republican people have been orphaned; we must offer them refuge and build a common home for republicans, democrats, socialists and all progressives who defend a certain idea of Senegal as a bulwark against nationalism, absolutism, intolerance and serious attacks on what makes us an upright, open and respected Nation.

As soon as the final results are announced, we must offer half of the Senegalese people, who have refused to entrust the country to adventurers, a horizon, a project, a discourse and a framework for expression for an opposition that is demanding in its principles, intelligent in its strategy and innovative in its methods. In this path of hope that must emerge to turn the defeat of 24 March into fertile ground for a surge towards future victories, I am ready to assume my full share of responsibility.

By Hamidou ANNE / hamidou.anne@lequotidien.sn

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