The apparent triumph of Bassirou Diomaye Faye in the presidential election in Senegal also sanctions the record of the outgoing Macky Sall and the succession quarrels of a powerful and declining camp – in which tongues are beginning to loosen.

The defeat released a mixture of emotions among a few dozen supporters gathered Monday March 25 in Dakar at the headquarters of the presidential party APR (Alliance for the Republic) to hear the candidate of power, Amadou Ba, congratulate the winner in an atmosphere of end of reign.

“Amadou Ba was loyal, unfortunately he was opposed by some of our leaders,” said René-Pierre Yehoume, a coordinator of the Benno Bokk Yakaar (BBY) coalition formed around the presidential party. The campaign required silence, but “we can say that today,” he adds.

Read alsoSenegal: how to explain the victory of Bassirou Diomaye Faye in the first round?

Some activists, in veiled words, questioned the untouchable President Macky Sall and his lesser investment in the campaign of the man he designated to run for his succession.

“Macky Sall sacrificed those who had been with him since 2008”, the date of the creation of the APR which served him as an apparatus of conquest and exercise of power, said Wednesday in the newspaper Le Quotidien Moustapha Diakhaté. “Macky Sall torpedoed the careers of thousands of activists who accompanied him all these years,” insists the former president of the BBY parliamentary group, breaking with the APR.

The BBY spokesperson wants to be lenient. He cites the “lack of serenity” attributable to the defeat. The “new opposition” must accept the outcome and prepare to play its role, Pape Mahawa Diouf told AFP. “The time to wash the laundry between us will come, it will be done as quietly as possible,” he said. But “we have an indisputable record of building the country.”

Analysts explain Bassirou Diomaye Faye's victory by adherence to his promise of "break" with injustice and corruption, and to his personality, close to the Senegalese.

The other side of the analysis is the rejection of the results of 12 years of Sall's presidency, in particular the last three, marked by political unrest, the fallout from the global crisis and the slowdown in growth.

Amadou Ba presented himself as the continuation of the action of President Sall, whose ambitious development plan and major works changed the face of Senegal, but did not eliminate poverty or inequalities.

Amadou Ba, “the last big mistake”

Macky Sall's legacy is also what an analyst called the "intangible balance sheet": the unrest, dozens of deaths, hundreds of arrests, the violations denounced by rights defenders, the postponement of the presidential election.

“They have accumulated so many errors,” says El Hadji Mamadou Mbaye, professor and researcher in political science. The defeat was acquired a long time ago, according to him: “Things (were) bent” since the legal indictment of the anti-system opponent Ousmane Sonko, who ignited the powder in 2021.

The election highlighted extreme “bipolarization” after three years of standoff, he notes. But “the last big mistake” consisted of the choice of Amadou Ba, he said.

For the first time, an outgoing president organized an election without showing up. In Senegal, "there is the leader, who is the founder of the party (...), and then there are the others", says Alassane Ndao, lecturer at the University of Saint-Louis quoted in the daily The Observer. With the withdrawal of the incumbent, the rivalries “exploded”.

Caciques, fearing a fiasco, publicly demanded a change of candidate. Three dissidents stood against Amadou Ba, not very charismatic, not very political.

In January, Amadou Ba experienced the defeat of an alliance between deputies from his camp and the opposition to create a commission of inquiry into accusations of corruption against him. President Sall invoked these accusations to justify a resounding postponement of the presidential election.

Amadou Ba's campaign began to accelerate in the home stretch when the head of state confirmed him as his candidate, after many rumors about a abandonment on his part.

But his efforts were hit hard by the amnesty initiated by the president in the name of easing the tension. The release from prison of Ousmane Sonko and the future president, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, caused a blast effect, analysts agree.

Among them, Hamidou Anne is a fierce detractor of the Faye/Sonko duo. Their liberation made “unsavory people into unsinkable heroes in the eyes of youth,” he wrote in Le Quotidien. The majority “prepared (its) brutal end by giving every day for three years the impression that it was preparing” their advent.

With AFP

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