In Senegal, we had to wait less than twenty-four hours after the closing of the polling stations to know the outcome of the presidential election which was held on Sunday March 24. Against all expectations, the anti-system opponent Bassirou Diomaye Faye, designated heir to the leader of the African Patriots of Senegal for work, ethics and fraternity (Pastef) Ousmane Sonko, won in the first round. A victory recognized the day after the election by Amadou Ba himself, the government candidate.
For Gilles Olakounlé Yabi, who founded and directs the citizen ideas laboratory WATHI, based in Dakar, outgoing President Macky Sall is primarily responsible for this defeat.
Gilles Olakounlé Yabi This is not entirely a surprise. Bassirou Diomaye Faye was one of the two favorites. His victory is the expression of a deep feeling of exasperation with the governance of outgoing President Macky Sall. Senegal has experienced strong tensions for three years. There were numerous legal proceedings and, at times, almost a thousand people were imprisoned. The political maneuverings of recent weeks, particularly the prospect of a postponement of the vote in December when it was initially supposed to be held on February 25, were the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Pastef certainly has a solid electoral base, but it also benefited from the support of many voters who refused to continue Macky Sall’s policies. Those who voted for Bassirou Diomaye Faye were not necessarily convinced by the personality of the candidate or his project. They decided for the one who seemed best placed to embody the rupture, whoever that may be.
By persecuting Ousmane Sonko, the leader of Pastef prosecuted in several legal cases and removed from the electoral lists, Macky Sall allowed the opposition to take root. Without this determination, it would have been much more difficult for Pastef to maintain the base it had acquired during the 2019 presidential election and to attract new support, in particular, in the home stretch, with the rallying of the Party Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS) of former president Abdoulaye Wade and his son Karim.
Macky Sall completely missed his outing. He intended to run for a third term and gave up too late to have time to prepare his succession. We know that he does not have the best relationship with Amadou Ba. We can think that the desire to postpone the election until December was a way of starting the electoral process from scratch and possibly changing candidates.
I do not think so. There is, in public opinion in the Sahel countries – and well beyond – the desire to rebalance certain relationships, or, at least, to have the same relationships with a country like France as with others. partners. Pastef is not the only party to defend this in Senegal. Certainly, there are elements of convergence between the discourse defended by Bassirou Diomaye Faye and what the supporters of the putschist regimes hold, in particular on the question of the exit of the CFA franc. But we cannot compare the free choice of voters and a seizure of power by force.
Pastef campaigned by targeting young people and promising to pursue a policy centered on the interests of the populations. It is very important that Senegal maintains this tradition of political change through the ballot box while the military regimes in the region promote a discourse tending to discredit democracy as a system and elections as modalities of this system.
It is normal that there is a renewal of the dominant political actors, for better or for worse. Pastef presented itself as the voice of youth and Bassirou Diomaye Faye embodies this youth. But his victory does not mean that this could happen again elsewhere, in the short term. There is a lot of rigidity within West African political systems, where we see few new figures emerging. What is happening in Senegal is certainly being followed closely in Ivory Coast, where power is aging. There are quite young political actors in Abidjan, but this is very relative: when the average age of leaders and governors varies between 70 and 80 years old, we are very young at 60 years old.