Several districts of Dakar were the scene of guerrilla warfare between young Senegalese and the police on Thursday when the opponent Ousmane Sonko appeared during a trial on which his candidacy for the presidential election of 2024 could depend.
Mobile groups of young people threw stones at the gendarmes and the police in the streets adjacent to the court where Mr. Sonko was summoned to answer for defamation against the Minister of Tourism Mame Mbaye Niang. An impressive security device had transformed the complex into an entrenched camp.
The security forces repeatedly repelled the attackers with tear gas in deafening explosions, AFP journalists noted.
In the midst of this intermittent mayhem, a pharmacy remained open near the court unlike many surrounding businesses.
“We are neither for nor against what is happening,” says Mamy Diouf, the manager in her twenties. "What interests us is peace. Everyone does what they want but should wait for the elections and decide then. Violence leads nowhere and it's not good for the people. business".
Clashes were reported in other neighborhoods. An AFP photographer saw dozens of young people stone an isolated security force vehicle forced to extract itself in a hurry and plumes of tear gas on one of the main axes of the capital.
Mr. Sonko's journey to court under heavy police escort through a town on high alert was itself marred with unrest. The security forces ended up extracting Mr. Sonko by force from his vehicle to take him to the courthouse.
Those accompanying him say he and others were manhandled during the transfer and sprayed with tear gas.
Mr. Sonko once explained on the stand that he wanted to choose his route. "The police and the gendarmerie impose a route on me. I was brutalized. The regime only relies on the security forces," he said.
Mr. Sonko was examined by a doctor in court, one of the interruptions and multiple incidents that marred a hearing under high tension which, after several hours, had still not addressed the merits of the case.
The trial was eventually adjourned to March 30.
This new bout of fever is the latest episode in a psychodrama that has kept the political world in suspense for two years and which has already, in the past, caused considerable trouble.
In March 2021, the questioning of Mr. Sonko in a case of alleged rape and his arrest on the way to court had contributed to triggering the most serious riots for years in this country known as a rare island of stability in a region troubled.
There had been at least a dozen deaths.
Tensions are growing again as the 2024 presidential election approaches.
The case of alleged rapes, not tried for the moment, and that of defamation pose the threat of a possible ineligibility on the candidacy of Mr. Sonko.
He and his supporters shout at the plot hatched by the power to eliminate him politically.
Mr. Sonko had called on his supporters to come massively to support him at trial.
The personality of Mr. Sonko, 48, divides Senegalese. He holds a sovereignist, pan-Africanist and social discourse, slaying the elites and corruption.
He pounded the economic and political influence exercised according to him by the former French colonial power and the multinationals. It enjoys great popularity among young people in a population of which more than half are under 20 years old.
His detractors denounce in him a populist who does not hesitate to blow on social embers and to exploit the street to escape justice.
The doubt that President Macky Sall maintains about whether or not he intends to run for a third term also contributes to pitting the opposing camps against each other.
Near the courthouse, Abdou Anne, a 53-year-old teacher, pours buckets of water on a tire fire that gives off heavy black smoke at a roundabout after clashes. He says he is with the protesters, but intervenes because there is a child care center next door.
"I am not for Ousmane Sonko. I am for the youth. All they (the young people) want is to stop this project", that of a third term for Mr. Sall. "Nobody agrees. We are ready to give up our lives," he says calmly.
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03/16/2023 16:50:36 - Dakar (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
