Senegalese opponent Ousmane Sonko and his second and presidential candidate on March 24, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, campaigned on Saturday March 16 in Casamance (South), two days after their release from prison. MM. Sonko and Faye, when they got off the plane at Cap Skirring, immediately took their place in a black 4 × 4 vehicle with tinted windows, cheered by hundreds of people at the airport of this seaside resort, one of the most important tourist destinations in the countries, noted journalists from Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Candidate Faye, 43, in a white boubou and cap, was the first to appear, followed by Mr Sonko, 49, in a pale green shirt and also wearing a cap, both with their arms raised in victory, in front of a mostly young crowd who chanted “Diomaye president! ". A convoy of several dozen vehicles then left from Cap Skirring, some 80 kilometers from Ziguinchor, the main city of Casamance, of which Mr. Sonko is mayor, in a region which is his stronghold.
In Casamance, “I am in my domain. This welcome will be unique” during the electoral campaign, declared Mr. Faye at the Oussouye stage, near Cap Skirring. If he is elected, he would make the problems of this region, landlocked and undermined for more than forty years by an armed independence rebellion, “an emergency to be resolved”. Casamance “should have been the economic and cultural capital of Senegal because of its numerous potential” in agriculture, forestry and tourism in particular, he added.
Released after months of detention
Mr. Faye shared his “project for a sovereign Senegal, a Senegal of justice, a Senegal of prosperity”, at the Ziguinchor stage, where the convoy arrived when night had completely fallen. “There’s a week left until the presidential election. Next Sunday [March 24], at this time, we will be celebrating the victory of Bassirou Diomaye Faye as the fifth president of Senegal,” Ousmane Sonko declared in Ziguinchor. “To vote for Bassirou Diomaye Faye is to vote twice for Ousmane Sonko,” he continued, reiterating the tandem with the candidate he chose.
The caravan, which was to crisscross the region, attracted several thousand people along the localities crossed. The two opponents Sonko and Faye, imprisoned since 2023, were released Thursday evening after months of detention, under an amnesty law at the instigation of the president, Macky Sall, who is not running in the presidential election after two terms, of seven and five years.
This first trip by the two men outside Dakar takes place while the electoral campaign was cut short by the surprise postponement of the vote by President Sall, initially scheduled for February 25. Released from prison, MM. Sonko and Faye, president and secretary general of the dissolved Pastef party, can now participate in the campaign, which pits eighteen men and one woman against each other. Ousmane Sonko was disqualified from the presidential election in January, with Pastef then designating Mr. Faye.
“Libels and slander”
During a joint press conference on Friday, the two men attacked the ruling candidate, former Prime Minister Amadou Ba. “If he is elected, he will be the president of foreign countries,” said Mr. Sonko, accusing Mr. Ba of having covered up embezzlement. Mr. Sonko “does it again by devoting an entire press conference to tasteless defamation and slander,” retorted, in a press release, the Mr. Ba camp, campaigning on Saturday in the north and east of the country.
Mr. Faye's program presents him as the "candidate for system change" and "left-wing Pan-Africanism", who promises to restore Senegal's sovereignty and will renegotiate, if elected, the exploitation contracts of the gas and oil as well as defense agreements.
This platform declines the characteristic themes of Mr. Sonko, whose diatribes against corruption, elites, multinationals and the economic and political influence exercised, according to him, by the former French colonial power have made the success of Pastef .
The indictment of Mr. Sonko by the courts, combined with economic and social tensions and the vagueness long maintained by President Sall over a third term, gave rise between 2021 and 2023 to various episodes of riots, looting and ransacking. . The postponement of the presidential election caused new clashes. Dozens of people have been killed and hundreds arrested since 2021, during unrest which has greatly shaken a country considered one of the most stable in a West Africa shaken by force.
