It’s a funny Tabaski festival, the most important of the Muslim holidays, Eid al-Adha, which a large majority of Senegalese are about to experience. Due to the recent violent protests, sheep sellers are now afraid to move, as some of them reported being attacked by demonstrators, especially in Keur Massar (Dakar suburb) during the events at the beginning of June. The Senegalese traditionally sacrifice a sheep for the occasion. But this year, the crowds are not there in the big cities. Senegal imports from Mali and Mauritania for “less than 10%” of its sheep needs estimated at 810,000 head, including 260,000 for the Dakar region, according to the Minister of Livestock, Ousmane Mbaye. The “deficit” in Dakar is due to the “hesitation” of herders “given the current context” of unrest and the “disappearance” of outlets due to infrastructure works, the government explained.
As a result, prices have risen. According to several local sources, the price of a sheep can climb, this year, up to 200,000 CFA francs, or 300 euros. If the government wants to be reassuring about a “gradual reduction in the gap”, a few days from the Tabaski, it has on the other hand maintained the suspension of the boat between Dakar and Casamance (south) and of the public bus line, for reasons of security. The connections have been stopped since the unrest and many residents fear that they will not be able to return for the celebration. Only the national road, open only at certain times of the day, and the plane, unaffordable for many, still make it possible to reach this landlocked region in the south of the country already bruised by the events of early June.
And the political climate is far from calming down. This Saturday, June 24, the Senegalese President, Macky Sall, spoke publicly and officially to qualify as “terrorist acts which will not go unpunished” these deadly disturbances which occurred after the condemnation of the opponent Ousmane Sonko in a sex scandal. . The president was speaking at a ceremony closing a national consultation that began before “the serious excesses of June 2 and 3, unprecedented events” which resulted in “serious harm and damage” to “public and private property”, according to Macky Sall. “It is established that these facts are comparable to terrorist acts which will not go unpunished”, he added when receiving the final report of the consultation opened on May 31 and boycotted by part of the opposition, including the Mr. Sonko’s camp.
The participants in this consultation notably agreed on the principle of revising the trial of the opponent Karim Wade, excluded from the old ballot of 2019. Karim Wade, son of ex-president Abdoulaye Wade in power from 2000 to 2012 , was sentenced in 2015 to six years in prison for illicit enrichment. His father’s former minister of state, Karim Wade, 58, was pardoned in 2016 by Macky Sall, and has since been exiled to Qatar.
The consultation also proposed to modify texts to allow the former mayor of Dakar, Khalifa Sall, prevented by a conviction in 2018 from running against Macky Sall (no relation) in 2019, to be a presidential candidate. of 2024.
The case of Mr. Sonko, sentenced on June 1 to two years in prison, was not addressed by the consultation. His conviction makes him in the current state ineligible. On the highly sensitive issue of his possible presidential candidacy in 2024, President Sall promised to speak after the Muslim Tabaski holiday. “I will respond very soon. I will make a speech to the Nation. [It will be] a free, sovereign choice that will be explained to the country and assumed,” he said.
Macky Sall was elected in 2012 in a particular context of demonstrations against a third candidacy of ex-president Wade, he was re-elected in 2019. Meanwhile, in 2016, he had the Constitution revised. It states that “no one may serve more than two consecutive terms”. His supporters present him as their candidate in 2024, arguing that the revision has reset the counters to zero.
The Sonko camp did not wait for the Head of State to speak before going on the offensive. One of the opponent’s lawyers, Frenchman Juan Branco, presented last Thursday in Paris the content of a 170-page complaint filed with the crimes against humanity division of the Paris court, as well as a request investigation at the International Criminal Court (ICC). These acts target Senegalese President Macky Sall, his Interior Minister Antoine Diome, General Moussa Fall, commander of the Senegalese gendarmerie, as well as a hundred other people according to him. And relate to the period from “March 2021 to June 2023”.
“This step will lead to consequences for the people targeted for the rest of their lives, because the crimes that have been committed are imprescriptible,” said Juan Branco.
Since these troubles of 2021, “no investigation has been carried out (in Senegal) and no criminal prosecution” has been initiated, lambasted AFP Alioune Sall, deputy for Senegalese in the diaspora and coordinator in France of the Pastef, Mr. Sonko’s party, present at the Paris press conference. “More than two years later, we deemed it necessary, as a political party and as Senegalese, to continue the fight on the international level, since the Senegalese State, which is supposed to guarantee the fundamental rights of its nationals , don’t,” he said.
During the press conference on Thursday, videos and photos, some of them unbearable, presented by the lawyer, such as those of demonstrators killed or very seriously injured during the June unrest, were broadcast. According to Juan Branco, “the Presidency of the Republic itself, as an institution, has put in place particularly massive arms orders, the progress of which we have traced”, he said, citing “the delivery of 104 tons of weapons to the presidency in the second half of 2022”.
The Senegalese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Aïssata Tall Sall, immediately described as “childish and ridiculous” the approach of the camp of the opponent Ousmane Sonko. She disputed that French justice could act in the name of the principle of universal jurisdiction. As for the ICC, it “cannot pronounce as long as there is national internal justice taking its course for the same facts, and this is the case in Senegal”. She invoked the seriousness of the unrest and the right of the security forces to defend themselves, and assured that “independent” investigations were open. “This legal initiative, for us, is childishness and also, it is ridiculous,” she said. In the meantime, and in the midst of this seemingly endless political and legal battle, Senegal as a whole is holding its breath.
