Cameron Duodu
LETTER FROM THE NORTH
‘We have told everyone we will shave our heads to be like Mr [Abdoulaye] Wade. After that, we are going to stand naked in front of the presidential palace – to proclaim that we are like new-born babies and that a new Senegal is born.”
With these words, the supporters of Senegal’s newly elected President, Abdoulaye Wade, celebrated their victory. The victory was no mean achievement: Abdou Diouf, the defeated president, had ruled for 19 years. Not only that: Diouf’s Socialist Party had been in power continuously for 40 years.
Under the leadership of Leopold Sedar Senghor, the Socialist Party gained independence from France in 1960. Although officially Senegal was a democracy, Senghor ruled it for 21 years as a virtual one-party state before retiring in 1981, at the age of 75. Appointments to the civil service and parastatal organisations were used to co- opt the elite into acquiescence of Socialist Party rule. The workers and farmers, whom the party claimed to represent, were left largely to suffer poverty.
It is the discontent of the workers and farmers that Wade has been exploiting to bring himself to power. But even though poverty did exist in Senegal, Wade has had to contest elections to the presidency five times before he finally succeeded. At one stage, Diouf tried to buy him off by making him minister at the presidency. But Wade would not abandon his ambition to be president. He was arrested and charged with attempting to organise the assassination of political opponents. Nothing came of it.
As usual in many African countries, Wade was denied access to the official media during election campaigns. And protest as he would against actions by the electoral commission that appeared aimed at achieving the partisan objectives of the incumbent Socialist Party, nothing would be done about the electoral malpractices he railed against.
The only reason why he won this time is that Diouf and his henchmen in the Socialist Party were frightened by the coup d’tat that took place in neighbouring Cte d’Ivoire in December last year. They realised if they tried any monkey business, something similar could happen in Senegal.
And Wade made sure the Senegalese army knew the score. He accused Diouf of trying to carry out an “electoral coup d’tat” by secretly printing ballot papers and other election materials in Israel. If Diouf rigged the poll, then he, Wade, would call on the army to intervene, he said.
Wade’s charge that Diouf was plotting contemplating a coup d’tat by election could not be ignored because the information about election materials being secretly printed in Israel was disclosed by a former foreign minister, Moustapha Niasse, who had defected from Diouf’s Socialist Party to contest the election against Diouf and Wade.
Although Wade is no youngster at the age of 74, and his photographs make him look like a dyspeptic monk, he has a fiery oratorical style. He is also clever: during the election campaign, he would shout to the crowds who turned up at his rallies: “Hands up those of you who have jobs!”
Predictably, very few hands would go up. He would then shout: “Hands up those who have no jobs!” And thousands of hands would go up. He would then yell at them: “Sopi [things must change]!” And they would yell back: “Sopi! Sopi!”
Even though Wade brought out huge crowds, his message was not getting into the countryside, where the government radio, broadcasting the Socialist Party’s message in the vernacular, gave Diouf a distinct advantage. But private radio stations helped Wade and Niasse to counter this, and in the first round of the presidential election, Diouf failed to get an overall majority. He polled 41,33% while Wade received 30,97%. Niasse (16,76%) and another candidate, Djibo Ka (7,08%), shared the rest of the votes between them.
In the second round, both Niasse and Ka stood down in favour of Wade and their supporters went over to Wade.
So Diouf is gone. And the people of Senegal have shattered the myth that West Africans are incapable of running genuine democracies, in which the opposition can manage in elections to throw out an incumbent ruling party. Of course, the same thing had once happened in the Republic of Benin, where General Mathieu Kerekou, after transforming himself into a civilian, was defeated at the polls by Nicephore Soglo, who was himself defeated by Kerekou the next time. But it was so exceptional that many people have forgotten it. The opposition simply doesn’t win many elections in Africa.
Nor does a defeated president often telephone his congratulations to the winner. But Diouf did. He called his long-time rival to concede defeat. Being president is “a difficult mission and I wish you all the luck in the world”, Diouf said.
Wade himself said: “The first great objective of my political life was to get rid of a system in Senegal. Midnight has struck, the system is dead!”
He added: “I am a realistic man and that is why I did not make any promises. If anything, I promised the Senegalese people a certain number of principles that should henceforth govern the national life. These are probity, good work and above all the involvement of the youth in the construction of Senegal.”
Wade is expected to name Niasse as prime minister. It will be interesting to see how they go about dismantling the apparatus of patronage built over the past 40 years by the Socialist Party, without themselves falling prey to the same corruption and favouritism that they accused the Socialist Party of indulging in. Above all, it will be instructive to see whether they take any steps to make the electoral process in Senegal a lot more transparent than it was in the 40 years that the opposition battled it with hand and claw – to no purpose.