A man has a pathologically distant relationship with the truth. He misinforms all the time and in various languages. But he remains a man, and as such must benefit from a fair trial. A democracy is honoured to remain in all circumstances in the straitjacket of the rules that it has prescribed, whatever the situation and despite the seriousness of the dangers that threaten it. The eyes of the world are on Senegal. The scenario is too good for international observers who fantasize about the story of the persecution of an opponent by a corrupt justice instrumentalized by a tyrant from a distant African country. This is not the case in Senegal. But what is the truth materialized by a man who proclaimed urbi et orbi his haste to go to trial before hiding; what is this truth worth when manipulation and alternative facts become the norm? And when the press supposed to inform just and true, goes, in a large part of its components, against all the principles that govern the profession.

After two years of various controversies, an important trial should begin where Justice will have to decide in a private conflict whose consequences have caused many innocent deaths and made public debate vulgar. The sordid narrative has polluted any possibility of elevating the political dispute to the level where it should be. It is a matter of manners.

Political ramifications. Regardless of the adversities and aversions, the private life of politicians is of no interest to me. I find it unhealthy to limit the public space to unpacking the private affairs of citizens, even public officials. The private is private, and should remain so in all circumstances, except in the event of the potential commission of acts contrary to the law. find no greatness in instrumentalizing a private matter to harm an opponent. It goes without saying that if, as part of the public thinks, this case is not one, the judges will have a duty to say so.

In the same vein, I find it unacceptable to link everything to politics, to excuse all breaches of the law and public morals on the grounds that one would be an opponent and that one would be the object of alleged conspiracies. As if politicians were a separate category, outside the scope of the laws of the Republic, and that a particular right should be applied to them which would thus break with the principle of equality of citizens. There is a chivalrous spirit that many politicians of that time no longer have; for many, they are mediocre characters without any relief, devoid of a sense of commitment, the requirement of rigor and the cult of service to the city. How to apprehend the fact that a man can free himself from all the laws, from what Orwell called « common decency » and still dare to face his fellow citizens as if nothing had happened.

Senegal is a morally collapsed country, otherwise how can we understand that journalists, politicians, social and customary authorities can give credit to a man who daily embeds himself in a cycle of lies, contradictions and calls for violence, instead of facing judges in a private matter? After the accusation of rape, the call to « Mortal Kombat », the invocations of a conspiracy, the lies, the insurrectionary attempts; like a cycle of moral debasement.

In no serious democracy would a public man accused of rape and then indicted by an examining magistrate parade like this, building coalitions, soliciting votes, facing the media and his fellow citizens, setting himself up as a giver of lessons and even posing the patriotism cursor. In the end, the problem is not him, but us. It is because we provide evidence that public morality and the requirement of dignity and probity are not sacred that things of this nature are possible.

In no other major democracy would a political organization accept that its electoral roll be headed by a man charged with rape. No media would accept in a banal way to hand the microphone every day to a man accused of rape. No academic or public figure should take pride in posing ostentatiously with a man charged with rape.

The presumption of innocence is sacred, and no one should question it. In this regard, hasty judgments are unacceptable. And public officials, especially those in charge of governing, should refrain from convicting political adversaries before their trial. But, in the majority as in the opposition, we have fertilized the same seed of an anti-republicanism which, personally, terrifies me, because it is the bed of all the attacks on our common belonging to the same destiny. But the presumption of innocence, I remind you, does not in any way mean a premium for irresponsibility. Faced with such serious accusations, everyone has the right, if he has nothing to reproach himself, to proclaim his innocence, but he has no right to impose his nature as a man without embarrassment in the public space. Faced with these accusations, we withdraw to prepare our defense and to respond to our judges in order to claim our innocence, especially since the burden of proof lies with the accuser.  I am flabbergasted by the behavior of a man who will stop at nothing to satisfy his craving for power, ready to step over corpses to be elected. « A man stops himself, » said Camus.

We can have differences with other politicians like Khalifa Sall and Karim Wade for example, but in front of legal proceedings, they have shown responsibility, have not insulted judges, journalists or senior officials of the Army and left to appear before the Tribunal. Convicted and having spent long months in prison far from their family, they endured a great endurance without lamenting. These two men demonstrated a republican culture. They know that there is no honor in insulting and slandering those who, by the duty of reserve imposed by their functions, cannot react.  However, what best characterizes the mediocre is to erect no limits, to know how to keep neither secrets nor high posture and to ignore the meaning and the prestige of a State that they nevertheless aspire to lead. 

In 2011, at the height of a popularity that saw the doors of the Elysée open to him, the French politician, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was hit by the Sofitel scandal. He naturally gave up running, put an end to his political career, despite the extinction of the case following mediation with the civil party. This is an example of dignity and responsibility. Contrary to this posture, we have a man who, instead of going to face his accuser, as he himself has repeatedly demanded, and putting his activists and his friends at ease, prefers accuse the Head of State, his wife and son, the Minister of the Interior, the Bar, lawyers, magistrates, soldiers and police, France, its former allies, the press… only Aladji, the Touba coffee seller from an alley in the capital, still to his conspiratorial wrath. No restraint in putting a fertile imagination at the service of gross lying, permanently.

That a man symbolizes in his greedy quest for power duplicity, spinelessness and abasement, is a fact. But that he takes in his fall what was still held among politicians, journalists, academics, civil society activists, religious leaders is undoubtedly the most terrifying for our country. In Senegal, people with a certain media and intellectual thickness can defend everything, even the worst in moral regression, political poverty and attacks on the Republic, to act as stooges, personal calculations or in the name of political postures. These people are gifted with intelligence and therefore know that their hero, who has gone from a status of hope of the Nation for many, to a vulgar polemicist by interposed videos, slanders all the time, but they accept to sacrifice their honor and their love – own in the name of a common cause whose assumed claim is to ensure that republican institutions collapse.  These people know that a girl who has no diploma could not have the slightest talent as a therapist, but they repeat elements of language devised in the heat of conspiratorial practices in order to manipulate public opinion, some of which, should we admit it, believed in the inventions of this powerful machine for spreading fake news.

Victimization due to excruciating lower back pain, financial precariousness (for a deputy and former senior tax official), state conspiracy, summoning regional and ethnic ties, seditious attempts, calling for a human shield and at the supreme sacrifice, the malaise at the Court, the « attempted assassination », the voluntary disappearance: nothing was left to chance in this film of bad taste by these screenwriters with a fertile imagination but with very doubtful talent. The string is too big and the best jokes are the shortest ones.

It is in the face of these facts that the history of our country will record that we measure the elasticity of the convictions of some. Many have lost my respect forever if they ever had it. These pseudo-feminists, in truth people of few convictions, who parade and type the selfie with a man charged with rape. These self-proclaimed human rights activists who went to no lengths to invoke civil war in the event of a trial in this case. The muse of « My card my surety/gurantee » who defends with zeal the professional transhumant his new « champion ». The ex-future President of the National Assembly, leader without troops, whose agitation specific to the opportunists inspires only deep contempt. The aspiring intellectual, without talent, cheered up by the intoxication of the defunct M2D, turned into a luxury minion. The former progressive with whose tactless manoeuvres everyone sees to recuperate an electorate deemed would be orphan, the media columnists whose every statement oozes hatred if not vulgarity. Many of them have not shrunk from any hypocrisy, and their words and postures are recorded in the great book of moral decadence and attacks on the Republic.

Like the Titanic which sinks while the orchestra plays a requiem, they continue to invade television sets and the airwaves, to write op-eds and to publish indigent and lying reports in order to distill the most implausible of untruths, as if a curse had struck them.

In the meantime, their “champion” has shown neither nobility nor courage in the face of adversity. Boasting through almost daily “live” and press briefings in 26 long months and disturbing the tranquility of his fellow citizens is one thing, but facing up to his responsibilities is another. The most beautiful victories in politics are those that are built in the determination to fight in endurance without ever departing from moral standards and republican values, in order to always guarantee the unity of the Nation and to defend a vision of a transformative society.

It is in constant boldness in the face of adversity that the lines of honor are written. Otherwise, the permanent bravado that takes lives, destroys economies and upsets the balances of a Nation is only one extra portion of those who live on the rent of indignity.

By Hamidou ANNE / hamidou.anne@lequotidien.sn

  • Translation by Ndeyy T. SOSSEH / Serigne S. DIAGNE