The question is obligatory after i riots in the streets who followed the decision of the Head of State of Senegal to postpone the presidential elections for ten months scheduled for February 25: also Dakar Rally, one of the most stable African democracies, will join the other countries in the area close to the Equator, which have chosen, one after the other, eight in the last three years, the path of military coup and dictatorship?
Even with due caution, the panorama that the capital offered in the last hours gives hope for a different epilogue for Senegal, an ending in which at least the military has nothing to do with the ongoing institutional crisis. Because in the last few hours, the most important news in Dakar has appeared resignation of two ministers while the street clashes began to cool.
For the record, the minister of industry and the minister responsible for the committee for transparency in the extractive industries have left the government. But someone has advanced thehypothesis that those of the. are about to arrive incumbent prime minister, Amadou Ba, Macky Sall's dolphin and the one who, in his hopes, should have become his successor.
In short, we would be faced with a political crisis, which is completely different from a coup d'état resulting in the suspension of democratic rules.
What happened, however, should not be considered trivial. The postponement of the vote and subsequent riots occurred precisely because of the choice of candidate by Macky Sall, at least according to most analysts.
Last Saturday the postponement of the elections triggered the violence
Prime Minister Ba, an appreciated technician, but lacking in political charisma, would have been opposed even within the party that should have supported him. And when the president realized that he wouldn't be able to be elected, he preferred to overturn the table. Hence the dramatic television speech last Saturday in which he announced the postponement of the elections, motivated by the fact that, before the vote, clarification should have been made on the accusations of corruption made by some candidates for the Constitutional Council, the body on which the start of the electoral campaign depends. The postponement was then confirmed two days later by Parliament, which indicated the new presidential date on December 15th, a choice reached not without incidents in the building, during which opposition deputies were forcibly dragged out of the chamber by the police.
The reputation of the president of Senegal, Macky Sall, is faltering
Despite the violence, what has been defined by the opposition as "an institutional coup" is still a stain on the reputation of Macky Sall, until now an esteemed politician and good administrator. Because it is the second time in a few months that the democratic system has shaken in Senegal.
Last summer it happened after the'arrest of the main exponent ofopposition, Ousmane Sonko, 49 years old, much loved by young people, accused of various crimes, including rape, and then convicted of defamation. In that case Macky Sall, who concludes his two mandates this year, was suspected by opponents of have influenced the judgment to get rid of the opponent and be able to run again for the third time. And perhaps there must have been something true if his declaration of not wanting to stand again in the elections was enough to put out the fire.
This time having decided not to vote on time another appears blow to democratic stability. Even if the Senegalese, regarding government rules, have always shown that they are resistant to the myth of the strong man in command (89%), that they support multi-party politics (87%) and prefer democracy to any other political system (l '84%). This according to Afrobarometer, the pan-African research network. And at least so far.
This is not to say that Senegal is immune from the dangers of involution and that it has not entered a period of uncertainty and "trouble", but only that the democratic tradition in this part of the African continent is profound and comes from afar.
Senegal, an economic model for West Africa
Not only is Senegal theonly West African country a never having suffered a coup d'état in its recent history, but on the contrary it helped, in 2017, neighboring Gambia to oust the dictator Yahya Jammeh who refused to recognize his electoral defeat. Not to mention the key role of the president within the Economic Community of West African States (Cedeao in French, Ecowas, in English) to force military juntas to concede elections and return power to civilian governments. Furthermore the Senegal is considered a model also from the point of view economic to whose nascent oil and gas industry the presence of many contributed foreign investors, which have grown by 21% in the last three years, like the Italian one Saipem, a company of the Eni group, which in consortium with the French company Eiffage, has been awarded a contract in the gas field for the construction of a plant located off the maritime border between Mauritania and Senegal, a contract worth 350 million euros.
In recent years the proceeds collected, which is not trivial in Africa, have been used above all for build infrastructure, such as roads and railways; and great works, such as theDakar international airport; but also entire new neighborhoods for civilian residences and more or less luxury hotels.
A new Dakar
We saw this with our own eyes new Dakar, last month, arriving in the capital to participate in the International Assizes of the UPF, the Union de la presse francophone, the association of francophone journalists, a very powerful organization in the former colonies of France, proof of this is the fact that the meeting was opened in the presence of the President of the Republic Macky Sall and concluded with that of Prime Minister Amadou Ba, the protagonists of the latest events.
È the new part of the capital is large, bright and brilliant. In stark contrast to the old city, broken up between narrow alleys crowded with a kind and accommodating humanity who, to make ends meet, offers the most varied goods on the pavements or in tiny shops, from classic African masks to Western shoulder backpacks ; from printed fabrics to holey jeans; from exotic fruit to colorful spices; up to the birds in cages.
And we walked there new highway, the A2, the section of which from the airport was opened in 2018, and which was built not only with gas and oil revenues, but also thanks to a Chinese loan. As for the international airport, located 53 kilometers from the city center and inaugurated in 2017, it was built largely with the money of the powerful Saudi construction family Bin Laden, (yes, that of the terrorist), and named after the first Senegalese elected to the French parliament in 1914, Blaise Diagne.
To understand how Dakar has changed, just think that in 1970 the city had 400 thousand inhabitants, while in the 2014 census there were over 3 million.
The city structure of the Capital
The city structure is organized according to “arrondissement” – 19 compared to 20 in Paris – within which the neighborhood of Dakar-Plateau, which extends towards the sea all the way to the south, is the most modern and it is no coincidence that it hosts ministries and embassies; while in close contact with this neighborhood is the popular one of Medina, with mosques, shops and markets. There are no public transport lines as we understand them: the buses are minibuses, often private, very colorful and very crowded, which however we have only seen on postcards. As for the taxis, black or yellow, they whiz by everywhere and before getting in you have to negotiate the fare. Fun for some, stressful for others.
From the Plateau neighborhood you can see theGoree Island, from where slaves from most of the Sahel regions left for plantations in the Caribbean and the United States. The Portuguese built the first European commercial emporium in Africa there, in 1444; then as time passed, the most profitable market became that of human beings. On the island, a World Heritage Site since 1978, there is the House of Slaves, a colonial residence more or less like the others, yellow-ochre and red-Pompeian in colour, with two floors, beautiful, whose visit should be obligatory for every human being. It's impossible not to be moved, and the guide does it every time together with the tourist on duty.
Senegal: the sea here is work and not fun
Returning to Dakar, which is twenty minutes away from the island by ferry, you wonder why there is no one swimming or sunbathing on the very long beaches. Your local colleagues explain it to you and you feel like a complete idiot (or privileged, which is no better): the the sea in these parts means work not fun. That is, the Dakaresi (and Senegalese from the north to the south of the country) work on the beach as carpenters, joiners, sellers and fish processors. While the canoes are fishing offshore.
And for those who don't know, most of the The fish we eat in Italy comes from Senegal: tuna, grouper, golden, swordfish and blue marlin. In 2020 alone, according to a recent study, the exports of fish resources they reached approximately 399 million euros, equivalent to over 291 tons of fish. A heritage put at risk since the early 2000s, not only from climate change, but also from the presence of large industrial fishing boats that crowd the 700 kilometers of Senegalese coast, even illegally. There are even ships flying the Chinese flag, which pay Senegalese frontmen to obtain licenses. The damage they cause is enormous because they raid everything they find, leaving nothing behind in their wake. It is true that there are United Nations agreements on fish stocks that establish quotas so as not to damage the artisanal fishing of indigenous communities, but, as often happens with this type of obligation, they are not very respected.
Are the working young people of fishing supply chain, the less well off obviously, who, although school is compulsory until the age of 17, abandon it because they cannot afford to study for long. We are told by those who know the country well and have lived there for some time: the weak point, the one that the new political course should address and resolve, concerns them, the younger population, that is, the majority of Senegalese, because of the 13 million of inhabitants, half are under 5 years old.
And what do the missed elections and the institutional crisis that opened in Dakar a week ago have to do with all this?
The thoughts of the diplomat Giuseppe Mistretta
Returning from Dakar, and especially after the events of the last few days, we went back to reread thelatest book on Africa di Joseph Mistretta, director of the Africa Department of the Farnesina, "Quicksand", a never banal observer, among the first to be interested in the "new course" in Africa, that of the return to coups d'état and dictatorships to resolve social, economic and political crises.
The truth, is the thought of the diplomat that emerges from the book, is that even in Africa we should think that democracy is not just voting, but a complex articulation of checks and balances. And therefore that not all countries are the same. The Senegal, for example, it is one of the most mature states from this point of view, where the press is free, there is division between powers, and the parties are many and competing.
In short, it is true that what happened is serious and undermines the credibility of Senegalese politicians, but perhaps we can wait a little longer before also giving Senegal away to the dictators' front. Perhaps in memory of the poet-president Léopold Senghor.
