All things considered, with Macky Sall, there’s no time to get bored… Just as we were heading towards the start of a three-week electoral campaign, at 2pm on Saturday 3 February 2024, after two hours of stress and waiting, there was a shock: the Head of State coldly announces that he has decided to cancel the decree convening the electoral body. In easy French, this means that the election has been postponed. There will be a palaver tree and a few other adjustments between now and then, including the sound of tear gas and a few demonstrators in custody. Move along, there’s nothing more to see…

Oh, the world is stunned.

On the set of Europe 1, in France, a deadpan editorialist, Vincent Hervouet, instructs us that we are not in a « coup d’état » as is usually done on the continent, but just in « electoral poaching », after the Pds and Bby MPs, who, details the caustic colleague, « talk to each other at night, as they say in Africa », and finally concoct the postponement of the Presidential election to 15 December 2024.      

Put simply, barring a second postponement, we have nine months to deliver a new regime.

In the meantime, rats and mice are leaving the drifting boat, slamming the door with panache, remembering that they have sacred principles on which they will not compromise: why are you thinking of the intrepid former « investigative journalist », the super Latif Coulibaly, SG of the government, and Eva Marie Coll Seck, Minister of State, Professor of Medicine in charge of overseeing our mines (not our discomfited faces, but our subsoil)?

Cancellation of the Presidential Election of February 25: The Coup of Force

Naturally, the reactions were swift: the exalted guru of the Walfadjri group, Cheikh Niasse, a lawyer at the French Bar and a disgruntled Senegalese press owner, announced live that he would be writing to the public prosecutor to renounce his ‘sole’ nationality; he put his money where his mouth is by pretending to cut up his Ecowas identity card. On the set of the programme, he is thinking aloud about where to go after selling the family jewel, Walfadjri. An ungodly question: if tomorrow the President of the Republic sends him a compensation cheque to calm his frayed nerves, how is he going to withdraw it?

Come on, as good Senegalese, let’s meddle in what doesn’t concern us: is he going to get the opinion of his brothers and sisters before throwing the baby out with the bathtub and the whole house?  Some family reunions are shaping up to be turbulent!

If that’s all there was to it… Opinion is running riot: opponents are divided. There are the irascible, who speak of a « constitutional putsch », a « forfeit » and are pulling funeral faces. And then there are those who are lukewarm, those who have failed the sponsorship process, who are usually broke and therefore unable to post a deposit, and who are wondering whether it might be « God who is strong », as they say around Abidjan, and who might be giving them a wink, like the one to the Côte d’Ivoire football team in the round of 16 against Senegal.

Postponement of the Presidential Elections: Heavy Pressure on Macky

In the camp of supporters of Ousmane Sonko, the torchbearer of radicalism who is beginning to be forgotten at the bottom of his jail cell, there is jubilation: « Pros had planned everything! He said so! » Which is why, by a sleight of hand that only he knows the secret of, he finds himself in prison, a brilliant diversion that allows his lieutenant to slip through the net and find himself among the twenty candidates. It’s a high-flying strategy, » cackles the ranks of ex-militants of the dissolved party.

There are some who cultivate masochism, like the Senegalese peasant with peanuts.

Quant aux p’tits chroniqueurs de mon acabit, qui bouffent au râtelier du pouvoir dictatorial, tapent aussi dans la tirelire trop sonore des opposants timides, tout comme dans le bas-de-laine élimé de la Société civile, le verdict est sans appel : «Votre heure viendra, bande de corrompus !»
En résumé, on l’a dans l’os, plastronne-t-on sur les réseaux sociaux en délire.
As for the little columnists of my ilk, who eat at the trough of dictatorial power and tap into the too-sound piggy bank of timid opponents, as well as into the shabby woollen stockings of civil society, the verdict is without appeal: « Your time will come, you corrupt bastards!

In short, we’ve got him in the bag, people are swaggering on the frenzied social networks.

In fact, it’s only now that we realise that when, on 4 July 2023 (sic), the President of the Republic, his face serious and his tone solemn, tells us that he is giving up his bid for February 2024, he forgets to mention the killer detail: there will be no election on that date.

The nuance is not trivial.

With Ecowas raising its eyebrows, is the United States taking the piss, just because it was on the anniversary of American independence on 4 July (sic), that Macky Sall gave up his bid for 2024? The State Department, through its spokesman Matthew Miller, has just issued a sort of undiplomatic rebuke: « The United States is deeply concerned by the actions taken to delay Senegal’s February 25 presidential election, which run counter to Senegal’s strong democratic tradition.

The little circus of the colleagues of Mame Diarra Fam, Coura Macky, Ahmed Aïdara and Guy Marius Sagna apparently do not find it to their taste at: « We are particularly alarmed by reports that security forces forcibly expelled parliamentarians who opposed a bill aimed at delaying the election, resulting in a vote in the National Assembly that cannot be considered legitimate given the conditions in which it took place ». 

In a nutshell, « the United States urges the government of Senegal to organise its presidential election in accordance with the Constitution and electoral laws ».

A final slap on the wrist for the pundits of this banana republic: « We also call on the Senegalese government to immediately restore full access to the Internet and to guarantee that the freedoms of peaceful assembly and expression, including for members of the press, are fully respected ».

What have I got to do with it? It’s as if we were protesting when Trump’s buddies invaded the Capitol or when a stray bullet shot a Negro because he was rummaging through his glove compartment… They obviously don’t care: « The United States will remain engaged with all parties and regional partners in the days ahead. » There would seem to be an aftertaste of threats in this gentle note.

For all we know, at the moment it’s Yahya Jammeh who’s doing the goat’s somersaults!

By Ibou FALL