The verdict in the Sweet Beauty case, sentencing Ousmane Sonko and Ndèye Khady Ndiaye to two-year prison terms for the offenses of youth corruption and incitement to debauchery, led to violent reactions, looting and break-ins in certain areas of Dakar and the interior of the country. The image of the incidents that followed this verdict, for an individual who was able to set an entire country ablaze with his sexual errors in March 2021, to want to repeat the same blow in June 2023, is that of a State which seems to resign in its sovereign prerogatives. Can we accept that infrastructures are ransacked, roads blocked by groups with tires, makeshift roadblocks, stores ransacked, without the State responding in a consistent way? What world are we in for houses to be targeted by protesters, backed by rebels and delinquents, with the sole purpose of smashing dissenting opponents?

I was flabbergasted to see on the toll highway, between Thiaroye and the Mbao classified forest, the same groups blocking traffic, from houses, they threw a rain of stones on the toll. Each time the police system responds adequately, another section of the toll will be blocked. Stations of the regional express train (Ter) have been vandalized and burned, public services ransacked, without the State, which is supposed to guarantee the safety of people and property, raising its voice and showing a consistent response to the ambient disorder.

If Ousmane Sonko, with his pack of agitators from all sides, can, by being found guilty of serious offenses, taunt the country and push hordes of young people to break public property, private property and attack of order, it is because he thinks that the posture of our State shows a weakness and a cowardice that does not say its name. We can therefore understand that the phones seized from Ousmane Sonko reveal substantial financial deposits that certain big names of the regime and businessmen would have paid him as a tribute to better fight the State and all that represents the governance of the President, Macky Sall.

The recess has lasted too long, this country has been weakened by a duel between Batman and Joker which ended up transforming Dakar into Gotham. The smoke emanating from burnt tires, the empty streets, the small groups of toddlers armed with stones and Molotov cocktails to create disorder give our country a hideous image. This dark brothel of Sweet Beauty will have soiled all of Senegal. The passivity of the Senegalese state, in not quickly bringing order and allowing the seeds of chaos to grow, is disturbing in more ways than one. 

The responsibility rests with the head of state to restore order, at whatever cost. A country, with an organized Republic and a solid State, has been entrusted to him, he has no right to leave it in tatters. To speeches crying out democracy and injustice, having provided fertile ground for a defense of rupture for an individual convicted of youth corruption, I would say that there can be no democracy, respect for freedoms and justice if violence and chaos are the key words to publicize a cause.

President Macky Sall told us during the national dialogue he launched that he will not leave the country ungovernable, we are waiting to see. The ordinary citizen that I am spent his afternoon and evening watching for attackers from his family home. As far as I know, sovereign tasks do not fall on ordinary citizens. We let people organize their protection, get into a game of arresting thugs and looters, we will slowly but surely open a terrible Pandora’s box. What a country !

These lines are those of a Senegalese citizen bruised by disorder, the inconsistency of postures, the cowardice of people, the variable geometry indignation, the constant revisionism of facts and this disqualification of the truth that an entire country has embraced willingly. If Senegal falters because a sex offender, convicted, would have held the dragee high by using the fury of the street. And, that a State will have made itself incompetent and finicky not to respond to him adequately, we can say to ourselves that we will still have other days like this. Another citizen will wake up one day, twist the arm of the Republic and Justice, screw up our national stability and destroy our national cohesion for his simple desires. Being fed up is ambient, everyone is exhausted by this atmosphere of orchestrated chaos.

A friend often tells me that his great regret for the current governance of this country is to have let a braggart take everyone hostage and drape himself in the mantle of a revolutionary hero whom future generations could adore, when there is no worse fraud than hil. By the crystallization of all the bitterness and annoyances, by playing on the juxtaposition of hatreds, he will have succeeded in destroying Senegal in its seams of union. Too bad the hands opposite, which could have stopped this circus for good, seem to be shaking.

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

  • Translation by Ndey T. SOSSEH