With the dreaded general policy statement just around the corner, and with a majority of MPs hostile to him waiting in the wings, Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko doesn’t really seem to be concentrating on his subject.

It was strange enough to learn last month, via a laconic communiqué from the Council of Ministers, that the « Project », is currently being drafted and will not be presented until the end of the year, if Senegal is still a democratic republic by then.

The Pastef party has been selling it for a decade, peaking in February 2021, when the Sweet Beauty affair broke.

A state plot?

Read the column – A people, a buzz, a fair

We’re in the middle of Covid when the darling of Parliament, no doubt worn out by his health-destroying priesthood, seeks a remedy for a congenital backache that even African boa fat soothes but does not cure.

Ah, the cursed fifth lumbar!

Instead of knocking on the door of a physiotherapist’s office with an unquestionably pan-African reputation, the honourable member of the People’s Assembly knocked on the door of the proprietor of a little massage parlour with very unacademic offerings…

So much for curing evil with evil.

It’s on a young woman from nowhere, with sketchy studies but the fingers of a fairy and voluptuous forms, that the preacher of virtuous governance accidentally falls.

Dog of a life…
That’s all it takes for Macky Sall and his entourage to make a big deal out of a very simple affair. They include ministers, generals, magistrates, lawyers, journalists, politicians and other second-level civil servants.

The whole lot, in short, to storm the will of the people and undermine the legitimacy of the man who has declared his candidacy for the 2024 Presidential election in advance, and whom the People plebiscite before time.

Read the column – Mélenchon in Dakar: Don’t Shuffle the Pedals

This wouldn’t be a first under our democratic skies: it’s as old as the Republic itself. From Mamadou Dia to Khalifa Sall, the « system » eats its virtuous children.

All it takes is one ill-timed misstep to land them on the damp straw of a dungeon.

At that precise moment, in February 2021, it was no longer a question of donating blood to heal the sick, but of extreme sacrifice to save the messianic vision of Ousmane Sonko, the supreme patriot with the status of ultimate whistle-blower, the People’s MP intractable on good governance, the fundamental pan-Africanist that the continent’s sovereigntist cameo has been lacking since the assassination of Sankara.

I confess: I’m short of superlatives…
In March 2024, 54% of the electorate will delegate the task of removing the pillars and underlings of the « System » from the gilded heights of the Republic.

A minor detail: it’s not the capital Patriot that the People are bringing to power, but his timid lieutenant, who has the good taste to confuse Law with very African anthropophagy, and our august magistrates with cannibals.

Read the column – I Am a Journalist but I’m Getting Treated

The pair, saviours of a beleaguered People, emerge from prison at the same time and pause arm in arm in front of the cameras a week before the coronation. In my turbulent childhood, I knew Laurel and Hardy, Dupont and Dupond, Aladji Môr and Maroukhédia Guèye.

At retirement age, convinced that I’d endured it all, I was taken by surprise right in the face by Ousmane and Diomaye…

Macky Sall, gnawed by remorse, blithely went beyond all etiquette in order to atone for his faults: amnesties in all directions, accusations of corruption by magistrates, discreet but effective bite to his candidate, nocturnal meetings, little occult kindnesses to the enemy…

Finally, on April 2, 2024, the Palace on Léopold Sédar Senghor Avenue welcomed a new occupant, taking up residence for the time being at the King Fahd.

Is it absolutely necessary to clear all mines before occupying the premises? Remember, this is Africa.

Not surprisingly, the Prime Minister is the other variable in the « Diomaye môy Sonko » equation. Problem: neither has the slightest government experience.

Ousmane Sonko, recently elected mayor of Ziguinchor, has just had time to sit down in the southern capital’s maroquin before Macky Sall’s Justice Department went hot on his heels. As for Diomaye, during the same municipal elections, he wasn’t even able to win the mayorship of his village.

It looks like the voters of Ndiaganiao will have cross carpeted by the time the presidential elections come around…

Read the column – 2029 Is Now: the Time for Manoeuvres

In short, they’re at the helm of the Republic, and the People can’t wait to discover their mastery: recruitment by invitation to tender, the end of the public debt, the exit from the Cfa zone, the unceremonious expulsion from France with a kick in the pants of their last soldier on our soil, faggots hanged high and short, Wolof as the official language and « Seur’ou Ndiago » in ceremonial dress during republican splendours…

It’ll soon be a hundred days that the 54% of voters and their playmates have been waiting. Apparently, it’s been laborious.

They attend a few shows, including Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who opens the ball as a guest star with a plea, oh sacrilege, for gay marriage. In keeping with tradition, there’s a Toubab for every generation: Senghor and Pompidou, Diouf and Chirac, Wade and Sarkozy, Macky and Macron, Sonko and Mélenchon.

It’s always sophisticated to pose with your Frenchman for posterity…

Yes, but it’s not enough to fill the time we always find long when we’re bored. Like December 31st, you need a firecracker, even a wet one, to liven things up. The injustices of the justice system, for example, inspire a grand-place where amnestied murderers of judges, charlatans narrowly escaped from prison and insurgents on the verge of extinction all swagger about. Or, for the buzz, the fiscal misfortunes of the press, which Macky Sall has corrupted to the core. When bigamist Diomaye offers himself two rams on the cheap at the home of comedian Gallo Thiéllo, obsequious protocol refrains from sniggering. Still, this reckless expedition into the world of the poor makes less noise than his Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko’s rave at the Grand Théâtre in front of an audience of die-hard fans, to whom he disarmingly casually reveals his boss’s nickname: Serigne Ngoundou.

Our Prime Minister doubts nothing…

On the contrary, since taking office, the leader of Pastef has been spreading himself around with a kind of surreal lightness, multiplying his media appearances with declarations of war against the pillars of the democratic rule of law. One minute, it’s the magistrates, and even the laws that don’t suit him; the next, it’s the old regime’s henchmen who share the land on the Corniche and the cars in the Presidency, or the journalists of dubious morality whose ability to cause trouble needs to be taxed to death. He even sees enemies everywhere, hidden away in faraway lands, busy plotting putsches against the new democratic state emerging from the ruins left by Macky Sall.

So many smokescreens, so many massages to keep the laziness of indignation at bay. Smile anyway: it’s the month of joint…

By Ibou FALL 

  • Translation by Ndey T. SOSSEH