The official page of the Presidency of the Republic of Senegal has, in recent times, given the face of a battered institutional theater, reports L’Observateur. The attacks and invectives targeting the head of state, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, in the wake of the political divide with Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, paint a distressing scene which tarnishes the image of the country.
Like a crack widening at the top of the state, with repercussions in shock waves throughout the republican structure, the political tension between the head of state and his Prime Minister has left the shadows of the meetings to burst into broad daylight. The act of appointment, on November 11, of Aminata “Mimi” Touré to replace Aida Mbodj at the head of the “Diomaye President Coalition”, an eventuality that the Prime Minister had nevertheless deemed impossible during his Tero-meeting of November 8, acted as a brutal revelation, underlines L’Observateur.
Since then, the tremors have spread to the most symbolic spaces of the Republic. Institutional showcase par excellence and the country’s first digital mirror, the official page of the Presidency has become, in recent weeks, the scene of a wave of invective. With each episode of tension between President Bassirou Diomaye Faye and Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, the space supposed to remain strictly informative turns into a vast national vent where political frustrations, settling of scores and verbal violence collide, reports L’Observateur.
The head of state, supreme leader of the armies and guardian of the Constitution, suffered a barrage of malicious remarks on an unprecedented scale. Each publication becomes an opportunity for its detractors to vent their bile, in a flood of degrading remarks which questions the respect owed to the institution. This situation is the product of exacerbated political polarization since the arrival of the Diomaye-Sonko tandem to power. It is also fueled by the growing use of institutional spaces as grounds for demands and popular protest, coupled with an absence of moderation, automated or human, commensurate with the stakes on these official platforms.
Teacher-trainer in the ICT department of Isep de Thiès, Malick Faye reminds L’Observateur that social networks constitute a space for digital socialization extending the traditional public space. For him, the present moment constitutes a real textbook case calling for rigorous analysis and concrete measures in order to improve practices. He emphasizes that critical reflection and appropriate regulation are necessary to guarantee optimal use of these tools in the service of democratic and social development.
Failures in moderation and desacralization of leadership, continues Malick Faye: the elite-public conflict finds an invisible accelerator on social networks, transforming each political ember into a national inferno. Institutional platforms become spaces where frustrations, perceptions and political antagonisms are freely expressed. Conflicting content is amplified by the algorithm, generating a polarization effect that fuels bashing and emotional one-upmanship.
The expert also notes technical and organizational failures: lack of automatic moderation tools, poor anticipation of crisis peaks, sometimes late manual moderation, creating windows of vulnerability where insults accumulate. Added to this is a symbolic phenomenon: institutional verticality is transformed into an actor among others, promoting a liberation of speech, often violent in a context of political tension.
According to L’Observateur, this drift has repercussions on the country’s institutional branding. The insults and excesses on a platform supposed to embody Republican solemnity weaken the credibility of the presidential words, the perception of political stability and the professional image of the institutions. In a globalized environment, these digital signals influence the international perception of Senegal and citizen trust.
Aboubakrine Sy, business developer and specialist in digital communication, emphasizes that technical solutions exist: automatic moderation by artificial intelligence, strengthening of human teams, state Community Management strategies and communications cybersecurity. But, he warns, digital will always find a way, and the fundamental solution remains political: a signal of unity and coherence between the President and the Prime Minister would naturally calm the digital climate and strengthen national stability. Because in this theater without backstage that is digital, stability at the top remains the only light capable of keeping the shadows at bay, concludes L’Observateur.
