“To say that the new authorities do not have a program shows a lack of understanding of planning mechanisms…”
It is with a bruised heart that I react to the mixed contribution of Mr. Madiambal Diagne, who considers in his remarks that “It is now assumed publicly, with regard to Senegalese public opinion and with technical and technical partners. financial! The governance of the Diomaye-Sonko tandem will be based in some way on the Emerging Senegal Plan (PSE).” Following this contribution from Mr DIAGNE, my conviction is that politics must never obey any form of influence and interest peddling. In these moments of institutional change, my profile as dean of planners, having contributed however modestly to the development of several generations of economic policy documents, obliges me to intervene in this current debate.
As a scalded cat fearing cold water, it is crucial to avoid the trap into which the old regime fell, due to lack of supervision or rather lack of stubbornness. Planning and management of the economy have been diverted from the control of technocrats and thrown into the hands of politicians who have plunged the country into bad governance. At the start of his post, Mr. Diagne already forgets that the PSE is a public policy that has been developed on an inclusive basis, with citizen contribution, and the participation of different actors from civil society, the private sector, etc.
It is in the interest of perpetuating the strategic options which are supposed to transcend regimes that the participatory approach was recommended which would help the President of the Republic to make technical and consensual choices which must resist regime change. Moreover, the prospective vision which underlies the PSE dates back well before the election of President Macky SALL (see Senegal 2035 prospective study). The merit of the latter lies in his republican momentum at the start of his first term which would have motivated him to rely on inclusive and participatory reflections, and respect the products of the planning system.
At the time, we were all determined to support the new regime at the time, which was well committed to highlighting the updated Accelerated Growth Strategy (SCA), the National Economic and Social Development Strategy (SNDES) and the Senegal 2035 prospective study, three documents whose synthesis was called PSE.M. Diagne must understand that what is expected of the actors of this new alternation is less political support than a firm commitment to change the mode of economic governance. Wanting to say that the current authorities do not have a program reflects a lack of understanding of planning mechanisms or even bad faith.
A public policy is not a program of a political party, an association or an NGO. As proof, in the same way as all the political program documents of the candidates of the time, the YONNU YOKKUTE was quickly emptied of its substance to contribute to the strengthening of the public policy documents which were already there in 2012, and well before the election of President Sall.
President WADE did not validate the tenth plan, but authorized the formulation of the first generation PRSP in 2001, in continuity with an interim document to fight against poverty which had been in place. As we live in a country where the peddling of influence and interest is the best shortcut to access higher functions or to have proximity to the highest authorities for whom we do not have the intellectual means to assume the missions, it is normal to think that the PSE belongs to Amadou Ba and, or worse, emanates exclusively from his thoughts.
Mr. Amadou BA, whom I know well, would never boast of having written the PSE. I did not support his candidacy in the last election, but from my point of view, Mr. BA with whom I worked for five years, does not suffer from intellectual dishonesty. I cannot agree with a statement which describes the PSE as a decoy and which ejects it from the emergence plans, even if the arguments of the critics are justified in an electoral campaign context.
However, we must accept that deception, blind debt and economic and political governance ended up distorting the fundamentals of the PES and opened the way to criticism, sometimes well-founded. In Amadou BA’s defense, things really started to deteriorate from 2019 (see all the governance indicators and the break in the economic growth trajectory), with new political momentum from a generation of politicians at the head key ministerial departments, who seemed to understand nothing about the PES and its spirit.
Worse still, they refused to take the trouble to listen and learn, disconcerted by a political governance which sought in all cases to “reward” political leaders who win at home. And that was the drift! Anything goes, as long as you win. In the absence of a serious debt strategy, and an allocation of public investments backed by a sustained process of maturation and objective selection of projects, investments that claim to be part of the PSE are only mechanisms that only benefit to the companies that operate the works and to the politicians who approach and supervise them.
We cannot boast of having implemented a public policy if the budget executed never corresponds to the quantity of goods and services actually delivered. The economy is in perpetual distortion, fueled by excesses and irregular transactions generating inequalities and frustrations which increase the risk of population uprising.
Through this presidential election won in the first round, we see a clear expression of populations who want to reject old practices and bad customary governance. Moreover, we must consider this presidential election as a form of evaluation of the PSE. Whether with Macky SALL or with DIOMAYE, no document will go beyond the problem of growth, human capital and governance. I refer you to the Plan documents from the 1990s and even well before, which stipulated the sustainable increase in production.
Changes are at the margins and in reforms to improve governance and the technical, institutional and legal business environment. The PROJECT must be translated to respect the canons of economic and social development planning both from the point of view of participation and its content. The vision representing the raw material of any economic policy document remains valid. This is focused on good governance, which we all have is one of the major issues in our development.
It is the root cause of growth, to quote Douglas North, Nobel Prize winner in Economics and great theory of development. I would like to remind you in this regard that the PSE had devoted axis 3 of its strategy to governance, but the reality in implementation was quite different. You say Mr. DIAGNE that “politics in Senegal is the place where we can put our fantasies for certainty”! With the outgoing regime, political fantasies were taken for certainties, to the defiance of the conscience of the majority of Senegalese people.
Personally, being one of the last mohican designers of the Orientation Plan for Economic and Social Development (PODES), the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (DSRP), the Accelerated Growth Strategy (SCA), the National Economic and Social Development Strategy (SNDES) and more recently the PSE, I firmly support the need to develop a new planning document, which will be supported by the authority.
Moreover, the orientation law of the National Planning System requires it. This document must start from the assessment of the first ten-year phase of the PSE, bring the elements of recovery and acceleration towards the achievement of the emergence objectives in 2035 and beyond. Successions of Planning documents since 1960 have had mixed results.
President LS SENGHOR had the vision, but his strategy was not well defined and was not very resilient to exogenous shocks. His true convictions have not been translated to irrigate intellectual reflection. The difficult times of adjustment, experienced by the DIOUF regime, proved that public policy, whatever its intellectual content, could fail due to its lack of participation.
Until now, Senegal will long remember the managerial performances of Mamadou TOURÉ and Pape Ousmane SAKHO and more recently of Makhtar DIOP, despite his short stay. The start of the first real alternation would have started with Abdoulaye DIOP, who well piloted the PRSPs with caring technicians like Sogué DIARISSO, Thierno NIANE, Aliou FAYE.
Despite President WADE’s systematic rejection, the first PRSP was saved. Good participation, elegance in approach, targeted content. WADE’s second term, give or take a few billion, is comparable to SALL’s second five-year term. The latter left power leaving a situation similar to the legacy of President WADE. Mr DIAGNE, be even more forgiving with more humility!
Relations with the IMF do not belong to President Macky SALL, who found them here and left them here. President FAYE has the free choice, without taking the risk of giving the impression of abandoning the rupture. Everyone is supposed to understand that the IMF is indeed a wise eye for foreign private partners who wish to collaborate with Senegal which wants to be sovereign.
Far be it from me to engage in denunciation, I would like to say that the IMF missions were moments of intellectual gymnastics to displace and hide the failings and errors of regimes which despise orthodox practices.
What prevails is to increase budgetary transparency and sincerity in order to allow each Senegalese to access information on a regular basis well before the IMF, help civil society to access framework data, from the TOFE, of the balance of payments, by bringing together academics and other research centers which will fuel radio and television debates for the taxpayers that we are.
Your battle, as a journalist, is indeed at this level and I would be grateful to you. I repeat, the PSE is undoubtedly a good program! but was not implemented. Its rewriting is necessary, because it is this very principle which underlies it. It is first of all a twenty-year prospective vision with two ten-year programs executed in four rolling five-year priority action plans. The name doesn’t matter.
Whether it is PROJECT, PSE, PND or DOS (Strategic orientation document, good for the acronym DIOMAYE Ousmane SONKO, lol), what interests the Senegalese is the vision, and the medium, long, and short term which operationalize it to significantly improve their living conditions. From my modest experience, I will tip my hat to the PR if he ensures compliance with the principles of planning, programming, budgeting, monitoring and evaluation of the projects and programs that we have identified together.
May God cause what is planned to be programmed, what is planned to be documented and budgeted, what is budgeted to be executed, what is executed to be monitored and evaluated. The conclusions of the evaluations feed into the decisions! Finally, I would like to invite you to further encourage discussions in relation to the media to clarify the economic debate with eminent academics and former professionals of public economics, in order to support this new regime who must be supported to escape the traps of these “masked wolves” – “bouki you sango deru bey”.
Follow my gaze…
Mayacine CAMARA,
Senegalese citizen
Economist-Statistician
