Let’s not pretend we’re the startled virgin: in view of the results of the latest local and legislative elections, especially after the circus of the installation of this legislature, we need to realise straight away that the boring news periods are behind us.

The Presidential election, of course, is the surreal highlight. Except that you can’t imagine the extent to which…

And so, last week, it was on the occasion of The Day of the Tree that the salvo rang out. Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, always the one, having accomplished his duty to plant, offered himself an outing in the style of which he has almost a monopoly on the secret: « We found a country in ruins! »

Read the column – Waves of new rich, Struggles of new poor

It was almost obvious: a few weeks earlier, the new head of RTS, Pape Alé Niang, clearly moved by the state of the country that the new government seems to have qualms about admitting, lit the fuse on social media: in short, the molten alchemy of “Diomaye môy Sonko” will finally have to speak the truth to the People… Immediately relayed by the lively CEO of the Deposits Fund, Fadilou Keïta, who did not search for words to designate those responsible: the vandals of the outgoing regime left behind a country where even the grass no longer grows…

Certainly, the land sharing on the Dakar Corniche and at the entrance to Thiès can distract public opinion for a few days and the videos of the palaces of former privileged people circulating at the same time add to the overblown fury of the congenital hotheads.

Clearly this is not enough to quench the inextinguishable thirst for revenge of the « people of the 54% ». Which is starting to get extremely irritated, and not only because no one is hanged high and short in the public square… On the main boulevards, he watches incredulously as street vendors are evicted, and the motorcycles of the « Tiak-Tiak Generation » who are his people immobilized: the votes of March 24, 2024 seem to be turning against them.

It is clear, we urgently need big fish in the trap while waiting for the « Project » to come out of the delivery room of the Pastef administration to distribute the thousands of jobs that all these fine people are waiting for. Well, except those who continue to take to the oceans to take refuge in countries where the dream of well-being is still allowed.

In short, the few lollipops sprinkled here and there are not enough.

Read the column – Declaration of private politics

A sign of the times? We learn in the press that the mother-in-law of the outgoing President, an Adjaratou whose health is said to be failing, should be questioned by the police, even if it means picking her up with a salad basket, in the company of one of her sons, for some shady land stories.

A high-profile arrest picked from the presidential camp, like that of Karim Wade at the beginning of the Macky years? The “people of 54%” are just waiting for that to cheer up…

It could be better, or worse, it depends.

Already, crazy and insistent rumours invoke prosecutions for « crimes against humanity » against Macky Sall, who would be the sole person responsible for more than eighty lives lost. And we are not talking about the thousands of « political prisoners », understand innocent defenceless citizens, picked up at random, for the heinous crime of wearing green-white-red bracelets, between 2021 and 2023.

This should not precede the hunt for his ill-gotten gains by much. Already, we have difficulty digesting his pied-à-terre in Marrakech, trips around the world in a private jet, the indecent salary that the French President, Macron, pays him.

One wonders whether the new regime will not finally forbid him from setting foot in Senegal by threatening him with imprisonment. You never know? If only he were to return to the Palace on Senghor Avenue in five years, while the “Project” is supposed to last half a century…

Enough of daydreaming, the horde of the oppressed is getting impatient, and it needs something heavy.

Read the column – There are too many men, not many women…

It’s true, in the meantime, it raises a hare with its big ears, which makes noise: forty billion CFA francs of tax debts for a press completely corrupted by Macky Sall, and whose bosses are leading a high life so far, with undue subsidies and complacent agreements with public institutions. When the news of the blocking of the accounts of these sell-outs spreads at the same time as the termination of the far-fetched contracts, it makes goats jump in the small colourful world of Pastef.

You want my opinion on this case of the press and power arm wrestling? I’ll give it to you anyway…

It’s a brilliant mind, a distinguished lady, Fatima Simone Bâ, who gives us the unstoppable formula: « The press has embarked on an economy of pity. » Indeed, the mechanics of the media have been outdated for a long time, with the shift to digital.

Who said that « Google buried Gutenberg »? That’s what it’s all about. The annual whining about press aid, the five-yearly tears for tax amnesties, the half-yearly pleas to be received at the Palace, the cordial agreements with public companies, this has been going on for more than forty years and has achieved nothing.

And all this time it dresses us, the press, in the rags of the poor who live off the « charity business » of men in power, with democratic bells around our necks to ring in the event of electoral tribulations, and the certificate of good conduct and morals depending on whether your headline of the day suits your financial backer.

Since then, it has lived off the pity it inspires in people who look down on the media populace. However, journalism is anything but that: its ethics tend entirely towards the respect due to those who exercise this profession, undoubtedly the most beautiful in the world…

Let’s get back to real life, where a new power, to help its flock to be patient, repaints the picture of the Republic in the colours of catastrophe.

And since the declarations are crescendo, from the simple Dg to the Prime Minister, all that remains is for the President of the Republic himself to solemnly announce the national bankruptcy…

For now, it will be enough with the Prime Minister’s statement on the smoking rubble that is the ruins of the Republic.

And on these words full of wisdom that make us fear the worst in the coming weeks, Mr. Prime Minister boards the presidential plane bound for Kigali, where the all-category champion of bringing a country with bloodthirsty tendencies into line is preparing to begin a fourth term without a single cough to cast doubt on his legitimacy. Respect.

We can well imagine that to honor this continental meeting, the Republic must break the last of the piggy banks, the one found under a repulsive pile of debris and that Macky Sall, in his hasty departure, does not think to take with him.

And so, the Prime Minister takes to the air. In the photo of the grandstand, he is certainly not in the front row, but the main thing, since we are in the Olympic period, is it not to participate? And then, who tells us that for Paul Kagame’s tenth term, Ousmane Sonko will not be there, this time with the rank of head of state, at the forefront of the stage?

Calm down, I’m kidding!

After the short hop from Kigali, stopover in Bamako, for a working session with the Malian counterpart, who gave a speech to salute the Senegalese-Malian fraternity, evoking « the oblique construction sites » that we risk taking if it were up to the new settlers.

There is work in Bamako…

As expected, he does not escape the question of Pastef’s exacerbated pan-Africanism before March 24, 2024, which tends to have softened. No, he remains the same, he says, advising his brothers not to give in to strong emotions. He probably knows what he is talking about, having had to wish to dislodge Macky Sall from the Palace and make him know the fate of Samuel Doe.

Result, it is Diomaye, the President.

By Ibou FALL

  • Translation by Ndey T. SOSSEH