Senegal’s Controversial Leader: A Mussolini Parallel?

Before the National Assembly, a Prime Minister proclaimed himself, with disconcerting solemnity, the guardian of an unrealized revolution. It is Samba Diouldé Thiam, leader of the Renaissance and Citizenship Party (PRC), who expresses himself in these terms in a citizen report, written out of conscience and duty, he says, “without a spirit of hatred or nuisance. Because it comes from Senegal. For this political leader, “any revolution is a rupture of a pre-existing constitutional order. And this breakup did not happen. The handover between the outgoing and incoming power was organized by the same one! » Therefore, he concludes with irony, “our PM is in total break with the political culture generally accepted in the world and, if he is right, he should be included in Guinness. »
The drift does not stop at rhetoric. The leader of the PRC underlines an overwhelming economic reality: “how can we explain the country’s descent into near hell, which is seeing its debt rate go from simple to doubling, other than by a word too fraught with consequences, which did not have to be said by its author? » A usurpation of office, he says, manifest and repetitive, which costs the country much more than words.
On the question of police stations in universities, Thiam is uncompromising: “Only dictatorships openly install centurions in universities. The announcement therefore, on this point, is a crass political nullity. It’s an effect of sleeves and impotence. » Drawing on his long political experience, he paints a clear portrait of the Prime Minister: “Our PM has decided to be a Senegalese Mussolini, poorly tropicalized, to compensate for his inability to dialogue with intelligence. A guru does not dialogue, he instrumentalizes. »
Addressing the Head of State directly, the president of the PRC wrote with the gravity of an experienced man: “I am asking this of you as a Senegalese citizen and as someone who is at least your father’s age. » He recalls a presidential declaration that remains in our memories: “You took note of it and you said it in a solemn manner, not without subtlety: ‘Let him look at MY ARMCHAIR!’ And voila for the message! »
In a broader reflection on governance, Thiam formulates an original political diagnosis: “Many warn countries against the curse of oil, and almost no one talks about the curse of the presidential chair. This disease, in its manifest stage, is the reason for Senegal’s trampling and its developmental wanderings. » The cohabitation between the President and his Prime Minister, he observes, has lasted too long. The country pays the price, for considerations which only involve egos, not the national interest.
The leader of the PRC ends with assumed serenity and disarming lucidity: “As for me, I am old to be sent to prison. The only mishap that awaits me would be to be assassinated through explicit or implicit sponsorship. » Regarding those who insult him, he believes that: “insult is the weapon of the uneducated, the ignorant and those who have not received a good education in the family. It reveals the psychological instability of the insulter, who is ill, and in doing so, he deserves compassion and forgiveness. »