2023-06-02 17:33:24
In less than 24 hours, nine demonstrators were killed in the clashes which followed the sentencing of Ousmane Sonko to two years in prison for “corruption of youth”. The main opponent of Senegalese President Macky Sall was accused of death threats and rape by a young masseuse, Adji Sarr. The two-year sentence makes Ousmane Sonko ineligible for the February 2024 presidential election.
His supporters see it as a political trial and call for the resignation of the head of state, suspected of wanting to stand for a third term deemed illegal. “We are witnessing an extremism on both sides,” laments Maurice Soudieck Dione, associate professor of political science at Gaston Berger University in Saint-Louis. “Senegal is already in an almost insurrectional situation,” he warns.
L’Express: How did we arrive at such a climate of tension in the country?
Maurice Soudieck Dione : We must put this situation in its historical perspective. We come to this impasse at the end of an accumulation of politico-judicial cases which unfortunately gave the impression that justice was guided by power in order to remove its political adversaries. First, there was the Karim Wade affair. The former minister and son of former President Abdoulaye Wade had been tried by an exceptional court, the Court for the Suppression of Illicit Enrichment, with numerous breaches of the law, recognized at the time by ECOWAS ( Community of West African States) and by the Advisory Group against Arbitrary Detention of the United Nations. This last instance ruled that Karim Wade had been the victim of arbitrary detention.
The Wade case looked more like a settling of scores than a rendering of accounts. It was followed by the lawsuits against the mayor of Dakar Khalifa Sall, when the latter began to distance himself from the ruling coalition, Benno Bokk Yaakaar. Let us recall the sequence of events. In 2014, Mayor Khalifa Sall ran as his successor in the municipal elections, but under his own banner. He wins. Then, he calls for a “no” vote in the referendum on the reform of the institutions.
In 2017, he wanted to run for the July legislative elections but was arrested in March on suspicion of embezzlement of public funds. The following year, he was sentenced to five years in prison after an express legal marathon – from the first instance, to the appeal, to the cassation – so that his ineligibility was established quickly and that he cannot participate in the presidential election of February 2019 [NDLR : il a été gracié par le président Macky Sall le 29 septembre 2019].
Then comes the Ousmane Sonko affair. Unsurprisingly, given this history, many citizens saw it as another attempt by the regime to neutralize an opponent. All of this has a dramatic consequence: our institutions have lost their credibility. Demonstrators also directly attack symbols of the state: courts, police stations, prefectures and even the houses of ministers.
How to get out of the impasse?
The situation is inextricable, because power is caught in its own trap. Ousmane Sonko was acquitted of charges of rape and death threats but sentenced to two years in prison for “corruption of youth”, a charge which did not even appear in the initial request of the investigating judge. However, he was absent from his trial. Logic would dictate that Sonko be arrested, which would further inflame the country.
The authorities therefore face a dilemma. On the one hand the need to enforce the law – since they keep saying that in this matter, “force will remain with the law”; on the other, the prohibitive socio-political cost of this decision. Senegal is already experiencing an almost insurrectionary situation. However, the institutions having lost their legitimacy, here we are in a game without referees and therefore without rules: the door is open to the escalation of violence.
President Macky Sall has not yet announced whether or not he is a candidate for a third term. And his candidacy is considered illegal by the opposition…
The president’s desire to run for a third term has been constant since his election in 2019. Very quickly, the first signs appeared: barely elected, he abolished the post of Prime Minister [NDLR : rétabli en 2021] to engage in a hyperpresidency. Today, his camp is doing everything to justify in advance this third candidacy, which is nevertheless illegal. The Constitution is clear: it stipulates that no one can exercise more than two consecutive mandates. The president’s argument, which consists in saying that his first term of 7 years does not fit into the count – due to the 2016 reform moving from the seven-year term to the five-year term – is inadmissible.
When the Constitutional Council was seized, it was asked if the president could reduce his mandate from seven to five years during the exercise. The Board replied no, but did not decide on the number of terms, limited to two consecutive terms since 2001.
Facing Macky Sall, Ousmane Sonko appears as an anti-system leader and embodies a form of radicalism that worries part of the population in Senegal…
Unfortunately, power, by hounding him, made him a creature and became his first marketing agent. The Sonko case could have been handled differently. But as early as 2015, President Macky Sall said he wanted to “reduce the opposition to its simplest expression”. He did it through cooptation, by integrating opponents into his movement, and through excessive repression. Ousmane Sonko saw how Karim Wade and Khalifa Sall were eliminated from the presidential race. He said to himself: “No question of going to the slaughterhouse like the two previous ones. Since the regime only knows the balance of power, we will use force.” Obviously, this is a perversion of the democratic game.
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