On September 9, 2023, President Macky Sall convened his coalition, Benno bokk yaakar (Bby), and delivered the reasons for his choice of candidate for the next presidential election in the person of Amadou Ba. At the end of the meeting, Mahammed Boun Abdallah Dionne contacted him to say: “Mr. President, I will comply with your choice and I remain as always at your entire disposal.” Macky Sall is delighted with this first reaction and urges Amadou Ba to discuss quickly with his former Prime Minister. It must be said that a few moments before going to the meeting with the Bby political coalition, President Macky Sall received Amadou Ba to tell him to get closer to the tenors, unsuccessful candidates for Bby’s candidacy. This is how meetings were already been set up with some of them, including Aly Ngouille Ndiaye, who did not make the trip that day to attend the meeting. He already knew that he was not chosen by President Sall, who had announced this to him a few days earlier, during a trip abroad. Aly Ngouille Ndiaye and Amadou Ba were ultimately not able to see each other that day, as planned, because as soon as the choice of Amadou Ba was publicly announced, the Minister of Agriculture fulminated, loudly, on the airwaves of Radio Futurs Medias (Rfm), and presented his resignation from the government. On the same occasion, he declared his candidacy.

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The media outing of Aly Ngouille Ndiaye strongly put off President Sall and this gave more relief to the spontaneous reaction of Mahammed Dionne, which gave him balm in his heart. This is how the next day, Sunday September 10, 2023, after the Grand Jury program with Babacar Fall on Rfm, during which I presented my new book: “Macky Sall, behind the mask” scheduled for launch on Monday September 11, 2023, President Sall called me to assure me of Mahammed Dionne’s renewed good feelings. Indeed, I was in no way kind to his former collaborator, during the show, even less in the book. I expressed my scepticism to President Sall, and told him that the days to come will undoubtedly edify us.

Amadou Ba was also reassured by the posture of Mahammed Dionne who called him on Saturday evening, September 9, 2023, to personally assure him of his support. I remained convinced of the duplicity because I knew that Mahammed Dionne had approached, at the same time, another unsuccessful candidate, Abdoulaye Daouda Diallo, to propose an alliance of which the same Mahammed Dionne claimed leadership. Abdoulaye Daouda Diallo took this proposal as an insult. Sensing that Macky Sall’s final choice would not concern them, Mahammed Dionne had also already proposed an alliance to Aly Ngouille Ndiaye.

I therefore continued, on the set of Télévision Futurs Médias (Tfm) and on that of Radio-Télévision Sénégalaise (Rts), to unravel, with many anecdotes and revelations, the false image of blind obedience of Mahammed Dionne towards President Sall. Amadou Ba, in an effort to unite his political camp, broke a line of conduct in our relations, by risking asking me, in the name of our friendship, to take the pedal a little easier. I replied to him that President Macky Sall can always believe Mahammed Dionne, but I hope that he, Amadou Ba, would not be so gullible as to entrust important roles to Mahammed Dionne in his electoral campaign. With who knows what assurance, Amadou Ba insisted: “No my brother, Mahammed has completely aligned himself, he will not create any difficulty. He even gave pledges to the President.” I told him: “I honestly don’t have confidence. He who betrays once will betray twice!” When Mahammed Dionne made his candidacy public, it was a shaky Amadou Ba who said to me: “You were right.” In truth, I was able to measure the ignominies that Mahammed Dionne, brought to my home in 2008 by a close friend of Karim Wade, told me about Macky Sall, at the time when the latter was fiercely opposed by the leaders of the Senegalese Democratic Party ( Pds). Those close to Karim Wade wanted to carry out an unpacking campaign which I refused to join. Out of respect for President Macky Sall, I never reported to him the words of the man who would become his Prime Minister.  However, Mahammed Dionne seems to believe the opposite, because when he left the Prime Minister’s Office in 2019, he confided to certain allies that if President Sall adopted an attitude that had become hostile towards him, it was because of Madiambal Diagne. The man knows perfectly well what he can blame himself for.

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I report in the book: “Macky Sall, behind the mask”, that Mahammed Dionne, in February 2014, after patching things up with President Sall in China, came and explained to me that he had been misled by the “bastards” from Karim Wade’s camp. In any case, when in 2015, President Sall put me in touch with his Prime Minister Mahammed Dionne to resolve certain emergencies, I clearly clarified to him that I no longer wanted him to put me in touch with the latter.  President Macky Sall had the modesty or delicacy not to ask me the reasons. The fact remains that I probably wouldn’t have told him the end of the story. This means that the zeal that Mahammed Dionne always wanted to show to serve President Sall has never deceived me. He claimed to be the “double button”, entirely at the disposal of President Sall. His zeal ended up annoying many people in the presidential entourage.

The imposture or political fraud of trying to pass yourself off as the real candidate of Macky Sall 

The fact remains that there is a real problem of political coherence which appears in Mahammed Dionne’s declaration of candidacy for the 2024 presidential election. Moreover, has he not publicly proclaimed the unity of his political camp to scrupulously respect the choice of the candidate, what should President Sall have done after having received for this purpose, from the Bby Coalition the mandate or carte blanche? Was Mahammed Dionne not the first of the candidates to decline the proposal made by President Sall, to set up an electoral college made up of “major voters”, such as MPs, mayors, ministers, departmental advisors of the coalition? This would be some form of “primary” to nominate the candidate. The candidates for the candidacy unanimously decided to leave the choice exclusively to President Sall. Otherwise, they said, it would be a lack of respect and confidence in his clairvoyance. It then seems very absurd to rebel, once the choice is made on another person!

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Is it not also astonishing hypocrisy to contest the choice of President Sall and publish a statement on Thursday, September 21, 2023 by Mahammed Dionne, to be in line with the political legacy of the same Macky Sall and wanting to continue his action? It is also a lack of respect for the Senegalese that the same Mahammed Dionne, after having spent more than ten years alongside Macky Sall, suddenly discovers that we should work to bring peace to this country and that we should work to find solutions to the distress of young people. “I am committed to a new pact, which reconciles the Republic with its youth, whose malaise requires the urgent adoption of a new national youth policy. From now on, giving a job to every young Senegalese, and supporting them in their legitimate aspiration for a better life in their country, must be the top priority of the Senegalese public authorities,” he maintained in his declaration of candidacy.

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Certainly, more than five good years as Prime Minister would not have been enough for him to take the pulse of the country. It was only last week that he woke up from his long, slumber! Otherwise, would he never have believed in the relevance of the policies defined by the President of the Republic of whom he was the wise and devoted Prime Minister? Macky Sall and other Senegalese will appreciate the commitments of Mahammed Dionne: “I am finally committed to further reconciling the Republic with the intermediate social bodies of our society in order to better support the social cohesion of our Nation. We will achieve these economic and social catch-up objectives over a period of five years. Our ambition for Senegal will be expressed through a series of reforms and new projects which will be expressed as strong markers in the government program that I will put in place the day after our victory, in February 2024. These markers concern:

• more decentralized and more balanced institutional governance which guarantees the effectiveness of cooperation, with respect and independence, of the different powers of our Republic;

• better protection of individual and public freedoms through an independent justice system, a guarantee of the realization of our democratic ideal and true guardian of legality for all;

• greater economic sovereignty strengthening at the same time our political sovereignty and protecting the Senegalese people against the surge in international prices of foodstuff that is essential to us;

• the renovation of the public service thanks to an Administration resolutely oriented towards business services and reforms which facilitate entrepreneurship in general, and that of young people in particular; the desired objective being to position Senegal as the most attractive country in sub-Saharan Africa in terms of promoting a favourable business environment;

• a strategy of appropriation by the People of our natural resources, in particular with regard to the country’s oil and gas assets, thanks to the local transformation of resources and the rise in power of the State in the capital of consortia of exploitation;

• even more efficient public policies in the sectors of health, research, innovation, education, training, professional integration, crafts, small and medium-sized industry, technology, housing and living environment;

• the promotion of competitive agro-industrial value chains, the basis of national food sovereignty.”

On another note, we cannot help but be surprised by his new political alliance, announced by the publication of a photo with Aly Ngouille Ndiaye. This gives hints of a crypto-personal opposition because if they get together, it is undoubtedly because one has agreed to put themselves behind the other, which each of them refuses to do with Amadou Ba. Some of their supporters would claim a certain historical legitimacy or the precedence of a certain political commitment alongside Macky Sall, which Amadou Ba would not have. Certainly, of all the candidates declared for Bby’s candidacy, only Abdoulaye Daouda Diallo could claim it!  Mahammed Dionne only joined Macky Sall during the campaign for the second round of the 2012 Presidential election in Mbour, and their reunion was not warm, to say the least. President Sall categorically refused to receive him on June 2, 2013, when Mahammed Dionne travelled to Yokohama (Japan) to hope to meet him. This shows the depth of the spite that animated Macky Sall! Mame Boye Diao also only entered politics, within the Alliance for the Republic (Apr), after the 2017 legislative elections. Aly Ngouille Ndiaye, at the head of an autonomous political movement, had received the most astonishing promises from President Abdoulaye Wade, to support his candidacy in 2012. Brought to my home, by our mutual friend the architect Thiao Kandji, in September 2011, to seek advice on the course of action to take, I told him to avoid getting closer to Mr. Wade’s camp. I don’t think he had any reason to regret following my advice.   President Macky Sall could not be more disgusted to discover the true face of his former Prime Minister.

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On Wednesday September 13, 2023, he received Mahammed Dionne, just to encourage him to work with Amadou Ba. But he will discover an unknown face. Mahammed Dionne showed himself to be astoundingly arrogant, to the point that Macky Sall was indignant: “But Mahammed, it’s me that you’re talking to like that!” As if unleashed, in a daze, Mahammed Dionne reveals an irreverence which leaves Macky Sall no choice but to end the meeting.   General Meïssa Cellé Ndiaye, President Sall’s Aide-de-camp, cannot resolve the situation and still cannot figure out what fly could have bitten Mahammed Dionne. However, the latter wants to make those around him and particularly many activists and leaders of the Apr believe that his candidacy is inspired, dubbed and supported by President Macky Sall. While in New York, the Head of State sought to provide an update, on Thursday September 21, 2023, to challenge this false way of presenting things. But is it enough? 

By Madiambal DIAGNE / mdiagne@lequotidien.sn

  • Translation by Ndey T. SOSSEH