From prison to president of Senegal. On March 13, Bassirou Diomaye Faye slept his last night in prison after eleven months locked up for defamation against the government. He was freed thanks to an in extremis amnesty law that allowed him to run in the presidential elections. Eleven days later, his main rival and establishment candidate, former prime minister Amadou Ba, and outgoing president Macky Sall, who could not run after 12 years in charge, recognized his overwhelming victory even before the official results were known: Faye He had just been proclaimed the fifth president of Senegal and the youngest in the country's history.
In her first appearance before the press, Faye, just turned 44, sent a warning: “The Senegalese people have decided to break with the past.”
From Paris, which views with concern the loss of French influence in Africa in favor of Moscow in countries such as Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and the Central African Republic, it reacted quickly to the change of powers and French President Emmanuel Macron was quick to congratulate and reach out to the new leader of Senegal, its main partner in West Africa. “I wish him all the best and I look forward to working with him,” he said shortly after his election was confirmed.
From Spain, which supports a megaproject of a gas pipeline along the entire African coast from Nigeria to Morocco, passing through Senegalese soil, the political turn in one of the most stable African states on the continent, which has never suffered a coup. The West's hope is that Faye's indomitable speech will temper once he sits in the presidential chair, but it does not seem likely.
A law graduate, a former tax inspector with a reputation for impeccability and a practicing Muslim, Faye embodies a new generation of African leaders with pan-African and anti-colonial ideals who present themselves as defenders of national sovereignty and demand a fair distribution of the country's wealth and reform of a justice system that they believe is corrupt and at the service of traditional power.
Raised in a modest family of farmers, Faye crystallizes the disenchantment with the established order of millions of young people (two thirds of Senegalese are under 25 years old) and during his massive rallies he has promised to renegotiate oil or fishing contracts and has assured not being afraid to leave the CFA franc, a currency controlled from Paris and shared by 14 African countries. The creation of a new currency was called “economic nonsense” and a “populist adventure” by the old government.
With a boyish face and a perennial smile, “Diomaye”, as his friends call him (“the honorable one” in the Serer language, one of the main towns in Senegal), has not come to politics with the intention of gaining the favor of the system.
In recent months, he has been one of the most critical voices against the anti-democratic drift of the Sall government and has not hesitated to take his followers to the streets to demonstrate against the government, which responded to the challenge with tear gas and gunshots. Dozens of young people died in clashes with the police in one of the most serious political-social crises that the country has suffered since its independence in 1960.
Faye has not trembled in the face of the former metropolis either, from whom she demanded “balanced and respectful relations” to continue being a “safe and reliable ally”, but she let it be known that it will not be free: she did not reject approaching Russia if she considers it necessary. .
In reality, her incontestable victory at the polls is the product of a contingency: initially Faye was not supposed to be a candidate. The battle against power was destined for his inseparable friend and leader of Pastef, Ousmane Sonko, authentic leader of the opposition and extremely popular figure among youth, but accusations with shadows of “corruption of minors” prevented him from taking part in the race. presidential and they also took him to jail.
Far from giving up, Sonko named his right-hand woman, Faye, as the candidate of an opposition coalition (Pastef was dissolved by the authorities). “My choice for Diomaye,” said Sonko when naming his friend, “is not a choice of heart but of reason. I chose him because he meets the criteria I defined (…) no one can say that he does not have integrity. I would even say that he has more integrity than me. I put the project in your hands.”
Faye, who worked with Sonko for 20 years as a tax inspector and denounced elite corruption, took the job and took it to the top. According to his friends, the new Senegalese president is a methodical, serious man, with a brilliant mind, discreet, cold in analysis and firm in his ideas. He is also an indomitable character; a rebel leader for the new Senegal.
