Final Straight Line for PASTEF’s Victory: Let’s avoid the Sabotage Trap set by a certain Opposition
Diagne Fodé Roland
12/11/24
Attacks on PASTEF’s campaign convoys are multiplying: Ndar, Dakar, Mbacké, Diourbel, Koungheul, etc. Clearly, the situation is dire for a certain opposition that is resorting to provocative actions by mobilizing thugs to attack PASTEF’s victorious campaign.
The persistent violence, insecurity, as well as the theft of public funds, exposed by the state’s control bodies (IGE, OFNAC, IGF, Court of Auditors), and ongoing central and sectoral audits, is a legacy of the neocolonial system that succeeded French colonialism.
The liberal dictates of the IMF/World Bank and the corrupt misgovernance, which led to tens of millions under the PS, then tens of billions under the PDS, and finally hundreds of billions in colonial CFA francs, have amplified and worsened the struggle for survival. This has pushed a minority to become delinquent aggressors against the majority of honest citizens who are fighting to survive and live off their hard work.
This same servile submission to the dictates of imperialists, the predatory fishing agreements, and the embezzlement of public funds are also among the causes of the deadly pirogue migration that mourns our families and turns some of our fishermen into smugglers of would-be emigrants.
It is among these lawless delinquents that the illegal state of the APR/BBY recruited thugs with stolen taxpayer money to kill during the illegal repression of peaceful citizen protests led by our rebellious youth fighting for sovereignty.
It is also clear that it is from this pool of mercenary thugs that armed gangs are recruited to attack our campaign convoys.
How can one not wonder what connection exists between these electoral violences, these aggressive provocations, the “unnatural” death of the former minister, and the unsolved death of the former rapporteur of the PRODAC report! Are these continuations of the disappearances and deaths, including those of officers, during the dictatorship of the illegal state of the APR/BBY?
It is clear that these acts of violence are accompanied by insults, defamation, mockery, and verbal bravado, all aimed at preventing a clear presentation of the achievements and programs of the competing lists. These physical and verbal violences, which personalize and personify the debate and political life, lead to individualized and personalized relationship between the voter and the candidate or elected official.
They treat citizen voters as people who are incapable of thinking, whom they can subjugate through this personalized individualization in order to sneak through paid mercenary deals or the fanaticism of the “supreme savior.” This is, in fact, one of the inherent flaws of presidentialism without checks and popular control, which we have endured since 1962, following the Françafrican coup d’état by Senghor/Lamine Gueye against Mamadou Dia.
Neocolonial democracy tends to replace the struggle between programs, between projects, with a struggle between individuals, between personalities.
Therefore, we must not confuse the citizen, who is concerned with the affairs of the city, the country, and the nation on a collective level, including ensuring the respect for the community diversity of nationalities, religions, and brotherhoods within the country, with the believer who seeks personal salvation and thus individual salvation in the afterlife.
We must be demanding about the necessity of respecting each individual’s beliefs without these personal convictions interfering with the issues of coexistence in a democratic state, which clearly separates the status of equal citizens from the right of each person to have their nationality, religion, brotherhood, and beliefs.
The citizen should not be confused with the “devotee” or the “talibé,” with all due respect to each belief. Citizenship confers a fundamental prerogative, which is the exercise of free will to choose between the programs presented by political parties. This is the civic dialectic that defines the democratic relationship between leaders, parties, and the people. This is the popular education that leaders and parties owe to the people.
This is the antidote to venality or paid fanaticism, which is at the origin of the hired thugs used to attack and sabotage our victory. As our victory becomes clearer, it will increase the desperate provocations of the bandit and mafia-like politicians from the neocolonial liberal opposition. We are thus witnessing the post-presidential sequels of March 2024 and the fascist drift of the autocratic APR/BBY regime.
In law, responsibility is not collective, and it is up to the justice system and national police investigators to establish the individual responsibility of the political thugs in these unacceptable political violence.
In the meantime, all appropriate government measures must be taken to secure the campaign and voting process for the citizens on November 17th.
