We can only welcome the fact that Jean Luc Mélenchon, leader of the political group La France Insoumise (Lfi), is entering into the religion of republicanism. He has anchored his political career with left-wing extremism which fundamentally calls into question the authority of the law and respect for institutions. He systematically attacks public forces, judicial and political institutions, especially if the latter are embodied by people who are not on his side. He therefore regularly arouses controversy in France and finds, throughout the world, the strangest friends, not to say allies; in that they are hardly model democrats or those respectful of human rights, freedoms and democratic principles.

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But in recent weeks, he has resumed his duel with speckled foils with Fabien Roussel, Secretary General of the French Communist Party (PCF). Frankly, we somehow want to applaud « comrade » Jean-Luc Mélenchon when he rebels against Fabien Roussel’s call to gather in front of the prefectures and « even invade them, if necessary », to ask the State of “acting” in face of rising food, energy and fuel prices. Jean-Luc Mélenchon rightly believes that “this violent initiative is purely personal. It has not been discussed anywhere, not even in the Pcf. I therefore believe that it would not be reasonable to join given the violence that it would imply in this total unpreparedness,” he believes.

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Mr. Roussel assured that he was for “non-violent action”, but said he feared “eruptions of hunger”. He continues: “I prefer that a political party, [that] trade union organizations, [that] associations organize this anger and express it towards the representatives of the State who are the prefects, but also the ministers, the President of the Republic, to ask (…) that things move,” he argued. Fabien Roussel had also launched a call “to invade gas stations and supermarkets”, believing that it was “self-defense” in the face of rising prices. On the prices of gasoline and food, “we are being fleeced, attacked, racketeered, and we should not say anything? There are concrete measures to be implemented to lower prices, block them from below (…) We call for mobilization, to invade service stations, supermarkets, prefectures, because the State is responsible”, justifying that, “It’s a matter of self-defense.”

A vulgar settling of petty political scores?
We hold back in applauding this new posture of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and for good reason! The Secretary General of the PCF had maintained his candidacy for the 2022 presidential election. The Lfi estimates that had it not been for the 2.28% of votes collected by candidate Roussel, Jean-Luc Mélenchon (21.95%) would have been qualified for a second round, facing Emmanuel Macron (27.85%), because he would have beaten the candidate of the National Rally (Rn), Marine Le Pen, (23.15%). The same logic could have pushed the Rn to say that without the candidacies of Eric Zemmour and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, the Rn candidate would have come first in the first round!

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Ironically, it was Fabien Roussel who stood out or “dissociated” himself from Jean-Luc Mélenchon, considering that the speech of the boss of the “Insoumis”, on the riots, was too virulent in his eyes. This simply means that Mélenchon reproaches his Left “comrade” for his own turpitudes and his exaggerated demagogic impulses.

Mélenchon’s condescension towards Africans
French domestic politics or the little trip-ups or low blows, or even the little murders between friends and false friends of the Left, could have been the least of our worries. But Jean-Luc Mélenchon invites himself, regularly and cheerfully, into the political life of Senegal to give us hypocritically condescending lessons. Indeed, the leader of Lfi never dares to put himself in front of a television camera, to demand that the Elysée Palace be attacked by demonstrators to dislodge President Emmanuel Macron, drag him into the street and chop him into small pieces, in order to reserve for him the fate of Samuel Kanyon Doe, President of Liberia, on a macabre September 9, 1990. 

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Jean-Luc Mélenchon cannot say that he was not aware of a similar appeal launched, repeatedly in Senegal, by Ousmane Sonko, leader of the Pastef party. However, when the Senegalese Justice arrested this political leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon gave him support, to condemn the “dictatorship of Macky Sall, on the move in Senegal”. However, Jean-Luc Mélenchon would like to ignore the actions against the opponents of Vladimir Putin (Russia), Nicolas Maduro or Hugo Chavez (Venezuela) or Rafael Corréa (Ecuador), or Bashar al Assad (Syria).

Mélenchon’s tribune La France Insoumise insistently asks the French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, and, before him, all his predecessors at Place Beauvau, to dissolve Far-Right political movements and groups. These small political groups physically attacked elected officials and activists of the Lfi and burned their homes or attacked and ransacked town halls or border posts or schools. Do we need to recall the feats of arms of the Pastef party in Senegal, which ended up being the subject of a dissolution measure pronounced by the authorities of the State of Senegal?

I do not think that the small groups of the French Far Right have committed more damage and disasters than the hordes of activists that Ousmane Sonko and the various leaders of his party have called on, publicly, to attack public buildings, to loot and ransack homes and private property. Such riots have caused more than fifty deaths in Senegal and very heavy social and material damage which does not seem to move Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the least.  Can he endorse a public call launched on June 1, 2023 by the Pastef party, to the National Army, to overthrow the democratically elected President Macky Sall and seize power? Jean-Luc Mélenchon would never dare to make such a call in France! However, he supports the putschists in Niger, who overthrew Mohamed Bazoum, a democratically elected President, just as he had supported the overthrow of Roch Marc Christian Kaboré (Burkina Faso), also democratically elected, or Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta (Mali).

The leader of Lfi is offended that gas stations or supermarkets are attacked and looted in France. Unless he considers that there cannot be a democratic regime and a democratically elected head of state in Africa to avoid a military putsch! Is this not a lack of respect for Africans and their democratic conquests? What about the gas stations and supermarkets attacked and looted in Senegal by demonstrators publicly urged to do so by Ousmane Sonko? Jean-Luc Mélenchon or any official of the Lfi, has never taken his bravado to the point of refusing to respond to a summons from the police or justice in his country. However, when Ousmane Sonko is summoned by investigators or by magistrates, the Lfi allows itself to support his bravado against the Senegalese judicial institutions.

The same Jean-Luc Mélenchon was obliged to show contrition, to express his regrets and apologize after having mockingly imitated the accent of a journalist during a press conference. Does he ever hear what Ousmane Sonko utters as insults, invectives against his fellow Senegalese citizens and even against France and the French, and acts as rudeness in Senegal? Jean-Luc Mélenchon regularly responds to proceedings for public insults and defamation before French courts, following complaints from French politicians; but when Minister Mame Mbaye Niang files a complaint against Ousmane Sonko for defamation, Jean-Luc Mélenchon challenges him, for the right to defend his honour!

From whom should we learn or receive lessons?
A certain part of the Senegalese opposition, in a reactionary spirit or seeking to seize on any attack against Senegal to make arguments in our public debate, takes pleasure in relaying the most absurd ideas of Jean-Luc Mélenchon on Senegal. All the rudeness and all the slip-ups, as long as it’s the leader of rebellious France who says it. It is always in a condescending tone which in no way envies the language used by certain colonial administrators in the territories which were under their supervision! We must teach the right lesson or give the right word to Africans who do not necessarily understand all the mechanisms of a State or a Republic.

The functioning of the Senegalese justice system, the organization or not of demonstrations in Senegal, the management of the electoral calendar, everything comes under the microscope of Jean-Luc Mélenchon who likes to play the exotic card, to find a good tweet to place on Senegal. This helps him to colour his thread of monologues and diatribes on the French State or the governance of Emmanuel Macron. Senegal is an elsewhere which, in the French context, is very close to gaining sympathy in our diasporas or within a youth boosted by activities which welcome any hostile discourse on the progress of their country, without seeking to deconstruct or even study the veracity of the arguments put forward.

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The complex that we seek to instil in our leaders, by taking as words of the Gospel all the outings, the most hazardous, of a French opponent on Senegal, says a lot about a weakness of our elites, from all sides, in the face of words coming from elsewhere. In 2016, I returned to such a logic that many actors on the Senegalese public scene deliberately maintained, pushing for France’s interests to be taken into account on all major issues in Senegal. I said in a column entitled “The blue-white-red blinders”, that we were trying in different areas, “to scare or arouse complexes among those in power to force them to take French interests into account”; all the more so since several actors from both the opposition and those in power had tried, by all means, to stifle a debate on the holding of dual nationality by certain Senegalese civil servants, which could pose a problem in the exercise of their duties.

If in the public debate, our country remains attentive to the tempo dictated by French opponents, the day has not yet come when all the followers of dégagisme, indexing a neo-colonialism will be able to free themselves from the yoke of their “vile” colonizers. For now, Mélenchon tells his share of nonsense about Senegal when the mood strikes him. The relays and the scale of his tweets reinforce him in this game. He focuses on a good double standard by implicitly treating the cases in France and those in Senegal differently, between what is valid for the authorities of his country and ours, all in a populist, two-penny refrain, of which he has the secret. To say that it is legions of “Pan-Africanists” wishing to liberate the continent who echo his words, close to the preaching of missionaries in Africa, makes the fresco even more gloomy. We will have seen it all.

By Madiambal DIAGNE / mdiagne@lequotidien.sn

  • Translation by Ndey T. SOSSEH