If the divorce between Yaw and Taxawu Senegaal has been definitively recorded in the last two days, the break has been consumed for too long because of a conflict of interest. It is a “Mortal Kombat” between the Khalifists and “Patriots” whose future leaders seem to cross on the path of destiny. One finds the light, the other must go through the night. Unreconcilable!

The small political world loves small murders between friends. August 9 and its current heartbreaking aftermath, it was the World Forum for the Social and Solidarity Economy (Ess) that caused the abortion of the Yewwi askan wi (Yaw) Coalition. On May 2, there were hugs, smiles in the corridors of the Grand Théâtre where President Sall, Khalifa Sall and Habib Sy met, and other opposition leaders, thanks to the intervention of Barth’ Dias, mayor of the city of Dakar, project manager of the ESS forum. Analysts or semiologists and a growing number of observers perceived the birth of a new political order. This is the first act of political dialogue, the foundations of which were “laid” by the mayor of Dakar. With the agreement, he says publicly, of Khalifa Sall and Ousmane Sonko.

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In truth, the public reconciliations had not been accepted by all Yaw members. Because they were going to allow the return of the leader of Taxawu Senegaal in the electoral game. And, they were badly taken by the hard wing of the opposition coalition treating Barth’ as a traitor in the pay of power. They feared that the political dialogue would lead to their weakening. And it caused a crisis, which destroyed the unit.                                                                           

Barth’ and Sonko, heroes of the youth of Yaw, architects of this regrouping of opposition parties, kick each other. K is booed at an F24 meeting by “patriotic” militants. They succeed in hastening the decline of the coalition. The fracture created by this crisis broke the solidarities in the ranks and allowed Ts, whose leader, ineligible at the time, to regain his sovereignty. While the Pastef party strengthened its hegemony in the coalition.

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Only, Yaw, which summons her members to subordination, even forgets that she is symmetrically designed in heterogeneous blocks. Perhaps united, but immutable and without hierarchy. Because its existence, backed by an electoralist aim, is now swept away by a torrent of divergent interests, which had also caused the implosion of the Yaw-Wallu inter-coalition, after the prospects for the future were no longer the same in the National Assembly and in the political landerneau.

Today, the ongoing battle in the ranks of Yaw opposes the two locomotives whose destinies now intersect. Rehabilitated thanks to his participation in the national dialogue, Khalifa regained the fullness of his political career by becoming eligible. As the former mayor of Dakar finds the light, Ousmane Sonko sees his political future darken after his conviction for defamation, youth corruption and his indictment for undermining state security, conspiracy against authority of the state, call for insurrection…

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Undoubtedly, that is enough to justify the rupture? The doctrine of the former Pastef party is simple: there was a lying opposition, in intelligence or in connivance with the Sall regime, and a persecuted, resistant opposition that it embodies. He therefore puts all the chances on his side, with a new axis of attack, by attacking his former allies. Who now publicly question the methods of conquest of power other than universal suffrage. “We don’t believe in Gatsa-gatsa, but in the Republic,” Barthélemy Dias said yesterday.  He held a press conference to clarify the composition of the new Dakar municipal office and to settle accounts with Yaw and the former Pastef party. For him, the traitors are those who « have seized the Constitutional Council » to cancel the reform of the 2 K, whitewashed on the electoral level. Hear… This statement is the funeral oration of an entity which nevertheless succeeded in challenging the electoral domination of Bby during local and legislative elections.

By Bocar SAKHO / bsakho@lequotdien.sn

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