OPINION
By Musa Bassadi Jawara
I saw the above-captioned subject on Seneweb online news, and it caught my attention. The new Senegalese President, Mr Basirou Diomaye Faye, less than a week on the job, proclaimed they had found a “deplorable situation”. This mimics a situation in an air flight, the pilot telling passengers to have seatbelts on, “we have entered turbulence“.
Honestly, realistically one cannot delve into the outrage of the president’s macabre discovery upon assuming the mantle of power with specificity without an explanation of the deplorable situation. The Pandora’s box is wide open President Faye, the campaign is over and it’s time to govern. Welcome to the world of reality!
I’ve written articles and criticized in grandiloquent terms the demagoguery and mischievous propaganda in Ousmane Sonko’s narrative and boy… it’s going to be open season in Dakar, for the intervening period ahead.
On the evening of President Faye’s inauguration, there was a meeting at the palace: the Vice President of International Finance Corporation, Makhtar Diop (Senegalese national) a member of World Bank Group, Premier Minister Ousmane Sonko and President Diomaye Faye. The urgency of the meeting accentuated what President Faye described as deplorable. This was an ill-advised meeting and signalled turbulent times ahead for the Faye administration. France is watching and its foreign minister over the weekend responded to geopolitical developments in Dakar, with stops in Nairobi and Abidjan, after attending ceremonial events in Kigali and flew back to Paris. This was a warning salvo to Dakar by Paris, as the new order there takes shape.
What’s absolutely certain observing from afar, it’ll not be business as usual between Paris and Dakar. President Diomaye Faye and Premier Minister Ousmane Sonko ought to understand very early on that Western Powers have permanent interests and not permanent friends. I’m absolutely convinced Paris will remain relevant in
Dakar and shall have sway there beyond the natural lifespan of the Faye administration.
The Faye administration cannot ignore Paris and reposition to deal with Washington. If they do, the system in Dakar will crash within 6 months and that’ll be a deplorable situation literally and figuratively. The Sonko doctrine, dubbed “the project” will now be put to the test. A project paper does not run a state Mr Sonko, as President Faye discovered in his deplorable situation remarks. It’ll not be easy from this point on and the Sonko project thesis must be dismantled in haste in favour of multilateral covenants of previous administrations in Dakar, pursued assiduously and religiously!
