Following 40 years in which this African country has been a model democracy, without political violence, Senegal’s president Abdoulaye Wade (85 years old and with 12 years in power) is planning to run for a third term of office. This goes against various democratic mechanisms including the constitution that allows a maximum of two terms.
A large part of the population is against his candidacy and against the drift toward totalitarianism seen in recent years.
A broad social coalition has reacted indignantly and with a raised profile since 3 February 2012 when a questionable Constitutional Tribunal accepted his candidacy and rejected those of singer Youssou N’Dour and other candidates.
The president has ignored the social mobilizations and the diplomatic suggestions from the USA and France that he abandon his endeavor. On the contrary, he is reacting using the nation’s police force.
Radio Geneto in Tenerife, that airs the programme ‘Irradia’, offers a connection with Amadou, a Senegalese in the city of Louga and with journalist Pepe Naranjo, of the Africa focused web portal GuinGuinBali (Spanish), reporting from Dakar on the latest and most serious accounts of the situation in Senegal.
Senegalese commentator N’Diaga, who is a member of the International Humanist Party, says in reference to another front of local affairs that there is confusion about the activities of one Khassimou Dia – not the same-named unofficial Member of the National Assembly – who has announced his candidacy for the precedential race but who has never been a member or minister but is another person all together.
N’Diaga wants to give his point of view following the unprincipled merger made between the former head Ousmane Gueye of the Senegal Humanist Party and a politician named Khassimou Dia who had joined the political camp of President Wade. The merger took place with bureaucratic ‘actors’, as Ousmane, accompanied by two or three others and the organisation Sieur Khassimou Dia, which body made arrangements in the style of, “you, you take this position, an me, well I’ll have this other one!”
“This was done in defiance of all the Humanist Party procedures and methods which are common to all of our humanist parties in the world, also against our ideological references and organizational restructuring resulting from the extensive work of our organizations in recent times,” emphasised N’Diaga .
“It appears that Sieur Khassimou Dia operated a “takeover” using the good offices of the Humanist Party hoping to survive politically in the system. However, we humanists have another project and that is to legalize the Humanist Party, as an authentic one, that will work on the basis of our ideological principles and our norms and procedures…. I have a deep faith in this initiative, which, like a new day will reveal all the lies and deception. We state our total disagreement and take distance from the merger,” ended N’Diaga.
