Blog - Senegal: scenes from a presidential election
It’s the time of endless promises: factories, bridges, schools, roads. The champion of promises is the head of state, president Abdoulaye Wade. ‘I have two projects for you here. One is, to give you a big international airport.’ Place: Matam, on the border with Mauritania. Population: 17,000. Biggest concern: the bridge, which is threatening to collapse. Oh, he promised to fix that too.
►One week before the elections and the riots are back. Telltale signs everywhere: blackened remains of burnt car tyres. Deaths are reported. This is the pattern: stones fly, tyres burn; roads are blocked, young men rule – for a while. Then the police arrive. Shoot teargas, large amounts. The youth disperse, laughing, and regroup. One night, on coming home, I find teargas has entered my living room.
►A speech by Moustapha Niasse, a candidate for the opposition: ‘You arrive at the airport, you take the motorway along the coast, you pass the Monument for the African Renaissance and you sleep in an expensive seaside hotel. That’s the Senegal Wade has built. Only for millionaires.’
►Big noise in my street. A massive, massive caravan of 4WheelDrives, cars, I even spot a hummer. Impressive. It’s Idrissa Seck, one of Wade’s three ex-prime ministers who are all campaigning on their own. Seck fell out with his political mentor over (what else?) money. Spent time in jail for – unproved – corruption. If elected, his style will be the same: ‘Wade without Wade,’ as one commentator puts it.
►Long talk with an agricultural expert during one of Senegal’s interminable bush taxi rides. ‘It’s so easy to support he farmers, she says. ‘Fix the prices of their produce, help them buy their inputs and make sure that what they produce goes to market on time. Then we’ll be able to feed ourselves. Has this government done any of these things? I’d say no.’
►In Kaolack, youth have smashed and burnt the office of the PDS, Wade’s party. The party faithful believe it’s the work of paid professionals. One says: ‘We must bring in the army on voting day. We must protect the electorate. Otherwise, the voters will say home, especially the women.’
►In remote Tambacounda, the young rappers I meet don’t want to be put in the same boat as their colleagues in Dakar. ‘We’ve been peaceful. Yes, we do understand the anger but you know what, your voting card is much more powerful. A tyre burns out and then it’s over. This, your voting card, is your fatal weapon. Use it!’
►Speculation has exploded all over the internet and in the press about how Wade and his party are going to steal the election this time, ‘just like they did in 2007’. The minister for the interior is seen as the mastermind. ‘He did in five years ago, he’ll do it again,’ the speculators say. International observers appear rather unconcerned about the issue.
►Following the lead of television documentaries in the West, Youssou N’dour’s television station TFM has put riot footage from Dakar on a loop, accompanied by an endlessly repeated electronic dirge...the singer himself is slightly injured during one of the confrontations with the police.
►Watching the riots on television, one man remarks: ‘Have you noticed that all this gear the police are using is brand new? Somebody knew this was coming. They were prepared.’
►A man walks into a long, narrow and rather lugubrious drinking den. Sits down, orders a beer. Looks at me. Journalist, right? He reels off the candidates. ‘Niasse? Too old and he’s a socialist, I’m a liberal, like the president. I respect Abdoulaye Wade a lot but he has done his two terms and that’s it. Macky Sall? Not for me, don’t trust him. Gadio? Nope, also-ran, a vote waster. No, it’s Idrissa Seck. He’s my man.’ The television is showing endless footage of the riots. Nobody is watching.
►Every day, a truck goes through the streets of Tambacounda. It’s laden with loudspeakers that endlessly boom RedBlack’s anti-presidential rap song Gorgui na dem (go away, old man). A small crowd shouts and dances in its wake.
►The military are voting, ahead of everyone else. More speculation. What if Wade wins the first round? The country will explode. What if he orders the army to quell the riots and they refuse? Then you have a coup – by default. What if the army steps in anyway, with the blessing of the “international community”? What if...?
►A street-side vendor appears on national television: ‘I would like to request of the demonstrators to please stop burning my tables. I put my merchandise there and if you keep burning them I cannot work. Thank you.’
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