Following the public debate and political life in Senegal is quite daunting if you pay attention to the manoeuvres and logic at work to set the tempo or forecast opinion. Prime Minister Sonko’s latest outbursts on a host of subjects, from the headscarf in schools to outrages in the media and on social networks, not forgetting France’s respect for the Thiaroye 44 tragedy, reveal in hindsight a desire to light many fires in order to distract from the essentials.

It is clear that the Prime Minister and those who advise him have found nothing to do in the face of all the issues raised in the management of the country other than to create polemics galore. The solution, tried and tested time and again in politics, remains the same: create more crude polemics, put impassioned debates on the agenda and chase away any lucid questions with a torrent of sensational arguments. Counter-fires work, and Ousmane Sonko has understood this well. And to the point of abuse ending up scratching the record.

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Faced with all the issues of the day, the highest authorities, with the Prime Minister in the driving seat, are having fun playing the role of political pre-digitator in order to avoid debate and, above all, to divert public opinion. We are not going to talk about the cost of living and the rationalisation of the State’s way of life. This is a promise that has been made for years in order to conform to a new form of governance, with sobriety as the watchword, and a complete overhaul of the system. The cases of nepotism in appointments to public posts should also be removed from the debate, after the failure to respect the promise of calls for candidates. When the grain that needs to be ground does not suit, those in power go out of their way to offer seeds to amuse the gallery and give themselves respite. The numerous financial commitments made by the State, which will have to be explained with the debt machine running at full speed in the André Peytavin building, are a subject that must not be allowed to prosper in the eyes of public opinion. The same goes for the hundreds of young people who disappear during their crossing of the Atlantic, or worse, taken captive in Tunisia by modern-day slave traders without faith or law.

Given all these serious issues and pressing questions, Prime Minister Sonko, like a good political magician, has the formula to divert the debate. He makes the trivial triumph over the essential. The trivial must trump the serious.

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There could not have been a better time to give himself a media platform and dictate the tempo of the news in order to lull public opinion into a frenzy than during the award ceremonies for the winners of the General Competition. In terms of form, a ceremony for the winners and their families will be hosted by the Prime Minister at the Grand Théâtre, after an official ceremony chaired by the Head of State, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, at the Cicad. We have lived to see our State become a two-headed lion! The Prime Minister’s comments, aimed at giving the public debate something to gnaw on and avoiding serious questions, are drowning us in a pit of sterile polemic and muddy debates.

A Prime Minister must be anything but the instigator of anecdotal debates such as the issue of the veil or Thiaroye 44. The issue of the headscarf in public schools will have been settled since the start of the 2019 school year, but with Prime Minister Sonko’s statement, it will come as no surprise to see new incidents on this issue. In a country where one-upmanship is rampant, overzealousness has become a religion, and victimisation is an art, a public authority of the first rank has a duty to be more conciliatory and to reconcile positions than a promoter of antagonism. Playing the instigator-in-chief is not an epaulette we would like to see affixed to the uniform of any leader.

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Still intent on hijacking the public debate, the Prime Minister wants to become the gendarme of social networks and censor speech in the media. He considers it unacceptable for the honour of families and honest people to be trampled underfoot online, all under the guise of freedom of expression. Is he forgetting that the verbal terrorism and irreverence of his digital army are the very quintessence of the whole phenomenon of abuse on social networks? If he has any advice to offer to ensure that a healthy and clean Republic can live in Senegal, he should first rap the knuckles of his pack.

The Romans gave us bread and circuses, but our leaders are serving us fresh water made up of primitive and reactionary nationalism, trying to shoot at anything that moves. France and its President Emmanuel Macron are good targets. We need to open up a front based on identity and play the historical dispute card. With a leader of a former colony shooting down the leader of the former metropolis, the ingredients are well found to make good headlines and galvanise a youth connected by convoluted sovereignty.  If we look at some of the publications that followed Prime Minister Sonko’s speech on the Thiaroye massacre and the need to restore dignity to the sons of Senegal, we can see the deception of some of our laudatory intellectuals who become sounding boards for any warlike discourse. For historical accuracy and the substance of the argument, we’ll have to wait and see.

In the art of distraction and hijacking public debate, smoke and mirrors on judicial issues and the demand for transparency from the gods are never far away. The People want blood and we need to find ways of giving it to them or pretending to do so. There is talk this week of imminent summonses and arrests of dignitaries of the former regime for alleged mismanagement of public resources. In the interests of accountability, the troubadours of the current regime are announcing with great fanfare that reports from the Inspectorate General of State (Ige), the Court of Auditors and Ofnac will shake many a baobab tree. The vice goes so far as to announce that a line has been set up at the Ministry of Justice to refurbish cells at Cap Manuel and the Rebeuss remand prison in order to accommodate high-profile prisoners. Some of the wacky and far-fetched lines of argument are enough to make you imagine the ridiculousness that must be lining the walls of certain spin doctors and sorcerer’s apprentices as they rush to produce their unpublished publications or revelations.  It’s easy to see newly-appointed CEOs ranting and raving online about confidential reports of which they are aware, playing the role of a cheap inquisitor. They’d have to take the whole population into their confidence for us to be as incensed as they are.

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It is commendable that reports uncover serious mismanagement, reveal wrongdoing, and that those at fault will be prosecuted. However, it is important to ensure that this is not just a selective witch-hunt. One of the promises made by the Diomaye-Sonko duo was the publication of all the audit reports concerning the management of all public structures in recent years. This promise must be fulfilled as soon as possible. Reports by Ofnac and the Court of Accounts have been published in accordance with the law, but if they are to be made public, it would also be imperative for the same exercise to be carried out with all the audit missions carried out by the Inspectorate General of the State (Ige). A declassification decree would be a major step forward in the quest for transparency under the slogan ‘Jubb, Jubbal, Jubbanti’.

It is said that idleness is a grease with which evil is smeared, and I am willing to believe in the Prime Minister’s promise to move the lines and do good, just as he invites the winners of the General Competition to avoid being idle. But, in the future he will have to find a better way of deflecting public debate with media counter-fires.  I dare to hope that the memo from the General Delegation for Land Use and Control (Dscos) dated 31 July 2024, suspending all land transactions in well-targeted areas of the country, is not just another counter-fire that will turn out to have no effect, like all the previous agitation over the occupation of the coastline after the announcement effects.  Anecdotes really have no place in today’s Senegal.

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

  • Translation by Ndey T. SOSSEH