Last Sunday, 24 March 2024, the people of Senegal, regardless of sex, race or creed, went to the polls without boasting, as they have done regularly since 1848, despite many emotions. Each and every one of them, according to their own convictions, expressed their feelings on what our Republic should become, the temple of the future Senegalese, i.e. our children, our grandchildren and their descendants, who are our own.

Except that, this time, to speak of an alternation would be an understatement: even if the blood isn’t spurting out of the walls, this Presidential election is a genuine revolution…

That’s another thing about being Senegalese: you don’t do anything like everyone else.

Read the column – Hatred, a Cardinal Value in Democracy

It’s nothing new: each election, as usual, before the fateful day, brings with it its share of uncertainties, nervous breakdowns, clowning and tragedies. It’s been a long road since Senegal’s first mixed-race deputy, the lawyer François Carpot, born in Saint-Louis in 1862 and elected in 1902, was succeeded by Blaise Diagne, Galandou Diouf, Lamine Guèye, Léopold Sédar Senghor…

Like a curious tradition, they ally themselves with one another, then separate, clash, fight and succeed one another. They are all of the same breed.

Despite appearances, alternation of power in Senegal is an old tradition…

From 1963 onwards, the main election was no longer that of the Senegalese deputy to the French Parliament, but that of the President of the Republic. Léopold Sédar Senghor was elected again and again, in 1963, 1968 (after having postponed the election scheduled for December 1967 when the term of office was four years) and 1973, with scores that were described as Soviet-style.

As the only possible candidate, given the legal conditions for submitting a candidacy for the Presidency, he eventually came to his senses: every time he won an election, when it wasn’t a bloodbath, as in 1963, it was a social earthquake. The strikes of 1968 and 1973 brought the Republic to the brink of collapse…

Read the column – A Quick Guide to Departure and Controlled Skidding…

It took all the republican culture of the Senegalese Army, to which power was offered in 1968, to ensure that our democracy would once again sail towards its tumultuous destiny. However, all over Africa, and even on many other continents around the world, the Cold War was forcing military putsches and totalitarian regimes into fashion.

When I tell you that Senegal is a rare pearl …

Of course, democratic pluralism arrived after 1974, and the creation of the Senegalese Democratic Party, Pds, under the leadership of Lawyer Abdoulaye Wade, caused a sensation. But this was more a matter of institutional cosmetics.

The « party of contribution » was far too nice: it just asked to join a government to make up for the frustrations of a former militant, Abdoulaye Wade, who was beaten in his home town of Kébémer by Djibril Ndiogou Fall. A sore loser, Wade slammed the door on the Ups when, in addition, the Ministry of Finance, on which he was fixated at the time, went to Babacar Bâ, who replaced Jean Collin, Minister of Finance for seven years.

Excuse the pun.

In the wake of the institutional reforms, and Senegal’s need to sit at the table of the world’s great ideological families, the famous concert of nations so dear to President Senghor, other currents were tolerated.

Read the column – Senegal: Tales of Good « Democracy »

The repentant leftist Majmouth Diop, back from exile in Mali, resurrected the African Independence Party, Pai, at the cost of a nice pharmacy in the city centre.

The Senegalese political family picture was almost touching during the 1978 general elections, which combined the presidential and legislative elections: it was like an old western, with the good, the brute and the crook…

Underground, of course its fizzing clandestinely…

In this dark smala, everyone is counted, just about anyone: the indignant leftist, the obtuse Islamist, the simple-minded racist, the narrow-minded terrorist and the patented moron.

It takes all kinds to deconstruct a planet, doesn’t it? 

Senghor, at the helm of the Senegalese boat, was fed up for years. Age, no doubt, but the prevailing mediocrity, in my opinion, pushed him further into retirement. Re-elected in 1978, he planned to step down mid-term, at the beginning of 1981.

It was finally at the end of 1980, on 31 December, that he handed in his apron, elegantly, with that art of the beautiful gesture that only good manners inspire.

It wasn’t alternance, just a transition.

His successor, the interminable Abdou Diouf, from the height of his splendour, thought he had it all figured out: Senghor, the poet (understand, the dreamer), was an uptight democrat who demanded more height. Two metres, no doubt.

The simple-minded civil administrator, who believes himself to be a demiurge, opens the floodgates to a major and complex art that only superior and refined minds should practice: politics…

Abdoulaye Wade, convinced that he would make mincemeat of them in the 1983 presidential election, didn’t really understand that the boss at the time was called Jean Collin. It was a big mistake… He broke his teeth in 1988 too.

As the Wolof saying goes, « balâ ngay khàm, khamadi khaw lâ rèy »… Translation: before you knew, lack of knowledge almost killed you.

Read the column – Diouf-Wade: How Many Schemes?

On 19 March 2000, when the election results came in, the Senegalese people were relieved: at last, the world was changing… Wade was not Diouf, and the country’s destiny would take a new course.

It’ll be an illusion for a while…

It’s just a new bunch of profiteers taking over, with the difference that they’re hungrier than their predecessors. They pity those who used to nibble away with millions: they, the new masters of the country, are devouring it with billions…

It would take twelve interminable years for the deception of the first change to be unmasked. Wade’s panache on the world stage, the « Lions » adventure in 2002, global events such as the OIC, the Fesman and other world meetings, in addition to motorways, interchanges, buildings and other glorious facts, make people believe that Senegal is a rich country…

Except that the average Senegalese feels poorer and poorer all the time. They can’t even smell the billions we’re talking about. People are starting to talk about the « ties » enjoyed by marabouts and political pundits.

On 26 mars 2012, a new alternance takes place. 

A newcomer arrives, promising to be sober and virtuous. He has the good looks of a Senegalese, and his wife is touchingly friendly. A ‘darling kôr’ of slightly sophisticated simplicity, whose generosity is too exuberant to be innocent.

After twelve years of putting up with whims and fancies that have neither made them richer nor happier, despite the many white elephants in the Senegal Emerging Plan, the Senegalese people have decided to turn the page on what has been dubbed « a second alternation ».

This time, it’s no longer an « alternation », meaning a player on the public scene who has been in bed with everyone, depending on the season, in business or in opposition.

The Senegalese voted without trembling for the candidate who resembles them. No one is looking after him, even though he has been in the civil service for seventeen years and is not accused of anything. It’s just that he doesn’t have a long arm. Like all those who say they have merit but no « badiene ».

Bassirou Diomaye Faye, an ordinary tax inspector, has the slimmest CV of all the candidates. He’s not even a director of anything… He’s pitiful, compared to a candidate whose career path leaves one wondering: Director of Taxes, Director of Taxes and Estates, Minister of Finance, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prime Minister.

Put simply, BDF doesn’t even have the pedagogy to explain the « Project ».

That’s just as well, because the Senegalese don’t give a damn about it.

All they want is a clean sweep of all that has gone before: fickle politicians who make do with their good conscience as long as their privileges have been safe for the past fifty years or so.

In countries where frustrations are settled with pistols, it’s called a revolution…

But this is Senegal, a Republic like no other.

By Ibou FALL

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