On the occasion of the visit of the LFI and JL Mélenchon, O. Sonko, on behalf of his party, declined the sovereignist demands of the new Senegal.
Pinpointing the tartuffery of successive French-African powers, he notes that “You have never heard the French government denounce what happened” in Senegal between 2021 and 2024 while the Macky/APR/BBY regime killed and tortured dozens of young demonstrators, imprisoning thousands, banned demonstrations, cut the television signal, refused to execute court decisions, flouted the Constitution. He denounced the current French president, Emmanuel Macron, for having “congratulated” the liberal autocrat the former Senegalese president “at the worst” moment of his repressive relentlessness and called it “an incitement to repression, an incitement to the persecution and execution of Senegalese who had no other crime than having a political project.”
And yet Sonko reveals: “We almost believed it when President Macron declined the new African doctrine from the Élysée, [le] refusal of any political support for authoritarian and corrupt regimes. This is not what happened in Senegal.”
Broadening his diagnosis, Sonko notes that most European governments have prostrated themselves in an “approving silence” before castigating the double standards of the imperialist West and its African lackeys vis-à-vis the AES (Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger): “Those who today condemn regimes considered military or dictatorial are nevertheless inclined to go to other countries which are not democratic when their interest lies there to negotiate oil and the market.” Protesting against the “unacceptable” sanctions targeting these “brother countries”, Sonko clearly states: “We will not let go of our brothers in the Sahel”.
And Sonko then attacks the “neo-colonization” at work in relations between the imperialist West and Africa while noting that the “French people, with whom we have no problem” do not is in no way in question, but that the problem is with the “current governing elite” of France which is the initiator of “leonine relations to the detriment of Africans” before declaring its desire for cooperation “based on mutual respect and recognition of the legitimate aspirations of each nation to sovereignty.” Cooperation which therefore requires a “renegotiation of all leonine conventions to the detriment of our people” in order to obtain a “fair gain on our natural wealth for optimal mobilization of our endogenous resources… the framework of a process of rebalancing the gain that everyone must be involved in the management of these natural resources.” The currency being “an instrument of sovereignty…no State worthy of the name should subcontract its currency…we are for a cautious exit from this bloodless system” that is the CFA franc. It is on this basis, Sonko considers, that “together we can build a future where cooperation, mutual respect and solidarity are the key words of our relationship”.
Thus accession to power “will lead us to collaborate with all governments, including the French state and the government of Mr. Emmanuel Macron”. This cooperation must take into account the sovereignty of Senegal in the monetary field, but also in security. This is why “We must question the reasons why the French army still benefits from several military bases in our countries and the impact of this presence on our national sovereignty and our strategic autonomy”. Considering that the military establishments in Senegal could not be sustained, Sonko forcefully asserts: “I reiterate here the desire of Senegal to have its own control, which desire is incompatible with the lasting presence of foreign military bases”, which does not does not prevent that “This does not call into question the defense agreements”.
The same goes for monetary sovereignty, which he declares is a long-term objective to be “achieved with prudence”.
In an asserted sovereignist impulse, Sonko strongly spoke out against “External attempts to impose on us the importation of lifestyles and ways of thinking contrary to our values (which) risk constituting a new casus belli” by explaining that “The The question of gender comes up regularly in the programs of the majority of international institutions and in bilateral reports, even often as a conditionality for different financial partnerships.
He was offended that homosexuality was “established as a priority debate within Western opinions” when there had “never been any persecution of these communities” in our African countries and called for respect for cultural specificities of each country. It is Western imperialist culturalist interference which raises “a great deal of tension and misunderstanding as it brings cultures, civilizations and political systems with diametrically opposed visions face to face”, which can even nourish an “anti- -Western in many parts of the world.”
This culturalist imperialism is also manifested by the fact that “France makes the stigmatization of the Muslim religion its favorite exercise, to the point of forbidding Muslims from dressing as they wish”. But as he adds, the Senegalese in the diaspora should adapt to it “if it is consistent with the culture, lifestyles and options of the French”.
After recalling the “centuries of slavery, colonization and neo-colonization, historical truth”, Sonko strived to deconstruct the imperialist narrative on “Africans manipulated by Russia, China, etc. infantilizing reasoning which does not correspond to reality”, because “each generation has known its share of activists carrying the same disapproving discourse of the voluntarily leonine and destructive character for Africa of its relations with the world and Europe… which is new, it is the extent that we take (emancipatory) ideas from the people and the young people.”
Faced with the biased and sometimes misleading readings of the words of the leader and leader of the Pastef/Les Patriotes Party, it is important to reestablish the essence of the sovereignist demands expressed by Sonko in the exchange with the leader and leader of the France movement. Insubordinate.
This program speech clearly indicates the direction towards which the new independence experience wants to lead the Senegalese people who have come to the polls to choose the sovereignist alternative against neocolonial alternations.
It is up to the Pastef/Les Patriotes party to put themselves in battle line to continue the work of mobilizing the people, particularly the youth, to ensure and guarantee the long march to exit the neocolonial system and achieve “the free union of free peoples of ‘Africa’ according to the apt formula of the Communists Tiémoko Garan Kouyaté and Lamine Arfan Senghor, step towards the ‘federal state’ of Cheikh Anta Diop, Kwame Nkrumah, Sékou Touré, Modibo Keita, Patrice Lumumba, etc.
