Earlier this week, Le Quotidien newspaper revealed that the country’s highest authorities were concocting a draft amnesty to wipe out a whole swathe of tumultuous and violent recent history. A draft text was to be presented to the Council of Ministers to sweep under Senegal’s carpet the riots of March 2021 and June 2023. The aim is to pave the way for a national dialogue and a calming of public tensions.

Such a project will lead to outcry from all sides. Between republicans and justice-loving citizens who would like to see clarity on the causes of nearly fifty deaths and material damage that have brought the country’s economy to its knees, opposition political factions that totally reject any idea of granting amnesty for a series of very serious events, and supporters of the ruling machine who have rushed to the rescue in order not to offer any respite to the enemy Sonko, Senegal, as a whole, has done well not to echo the music that would like to be played. As a result, the project will not finally be presented to the Council of Ministers. Various groups will take pride in having brought to a halt a project that was never meant to see the light of day. However, one can only be groggy at the idea that a political arrangement could have closed the lid on the sequence that was at one end to make Senegal a failed state. This shows the seriousness of the actions taken.

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How can we think at some point that the pill of oblivion should be prescribed in order to erase from memory all the excesses, abuses and crimes against the State and the Republic? How can we, in a logic of enlarging the space for political adversaries, hold them above the laws of the Republic by granting amnesty for all the serious acts they have ordered and for which their henchmen have signed all the contracts? Do we want to erase from our collective memory the Molotov cocktail attack on a crowded public transport bus that took the lives of the Diallo sisters in Yarakh? What is the logic of wanting to disqualify acts as serious as a series of attacks on vital infrastructure such as power stations, water distribution stations and mass transport such as the regional express train (Ter)? What personalities who were on the list of a deadly commando who was preparing to make an attempt on their lives and those of their loved ones, are going to want to pass off such acts as minor acts on the initiative of zealous militants? Petrol stations stoned, supermarkets ransacked, small shops destroyed, little people abused – are we going to write all that off as losses and profit?

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I still find it hard to believe in the high-sounding rhetoric of our politicians. In the short time I’ve been here, I’ve come across quite a few of them bending over backstage with reverence, while on stage they’re flexing their muscles. When luxury emissaries like Pierre Goudiaby Atepa and Alioune Tine take to the media to put on the agenda a thorough clean-up of the whole crazy and criminogenic sequence from March 2021 to February 2024, and when they find resonance boxes in the ranks of power for such a project, one becomes resigned to the fact that in our country, politicians would be exceptional citizens. They can insult judges, heckle officers, spit on our fundamental texts, call for violence, paralyse the economy, shout abuse at each other during the day and drink their tea at night, have every convenience in detention, find ways of talking to each other and wash away all their sins.

As with everything that is tortuous in this country and falsely cloaks itself in a form of lucidity, Alioune Tine will be at the helm. His media rodeo speaks volumes about his efforts to force public opinion towards the idea of a total amnesty so that the country gains in serenity and peace of mind. The Good Lord wouldn’t do any better, because leniency is the order of the day!

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If, in order to pacify the public sphere, the State of Senegal follows Alioune Tine in his self-indulgent indictment, praising everything from sexual delinquency to vandalism, not to mention terrorist acts, in order to drape all would-be criminals in the garb of political prisoners, the Republic and its children will be left without a strong State capable of commanding respect. I put myself in the shoes of a Judicial Police officer who, since June 2021, has been conducting investigations into serious matters and has seen all the work done to save Senegal thrown into the dustbin because politicians had to be accommodated. What an affront to our justice and security forces! Speaking of the guru of Dakar’s good-thinking and his humanism on spurious grounds, Alioune Tine, the ecstasy of this « renter of tension » when he called on France 24 for the release of his political hero Ousmane Sonko, could be heard a thousand miles away. To make such an individual the binder of a national dialogue speaks volumes about the logic of calculations and accommodations with everyone in a spirit of making a clean copy in the book of the Republic. The republican novel of this Nation has been stained, and responsibilities must be clearly defined. 

There are people who have systematically set out to destroy the Senegalese republican model and have spared no effort to ensure that this disastrous project prospers, and we cannot shake their hands in a cowardly logic of masla to exonerate them from all the serious faults that could have destroyed this country. When a crow wants to play the dove of peace, he must be reminded that some people, by their actions, have helped to promote a climate of permanent tension, sowing all the seeds of a civil war that Senegalese civil society, led by Alioune Tine, will have greatly contributed to theorising through political complacency and above all through a game of petty calculations that have done little for the interests of Senegal. All these people who have contributed to tearing up many lucid pages in Senegal’s great republican book must be fought relentlessly, with the energy and determination needed to break them. Dialogue without telling the truth is not the way to pull this country out of the abyss into which the entire political class has plunged us.

These words can be violent, but when everything conspires to trivialise violence that has almost destroyed a country, you have to know how to hit back. Violence, in all its forms, only calls for violence. To defend Senegal and its republican ideals, there is no shame in being violent in the face of the enemies of this Nation. Whatever the cost.

As this column drew to a close, a number of prisoners detained for crimes committed between March 2021 and February 2023 were beginning to be released. Some of our notorious « political prisoners » are sniffing the air of freedom. It seems that ways are being found to bring peace, despite the liabilities, politics has its reasons.

By Serigne Saliou DIAGNE / saliou.diagne@lequotidien.sn

  • Translation by Ndey T. SOSSEH