(SenePlus) – In an interconnected world where “no people are sufficient in themselves”, as Jean-Baptiste Placca underlines in his editorial on RFI on Saturday, the visit to Paris this week of the new Senegalese president Bassirou Diomaye Faye marks an important step for peaceful and mutually beneficial relations between Senegal and one of its traditional partners.
During this trip, his first outing outside Africa since his election, Mr. Faye participated in the Global Forum for Vaccine Innovation and Sovereignty, a crucial subject for his country and the continent. But it was his meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron that caught the attention.
“Isn’t that rather surprising?” asked Mr. Placca, referring to “small past enmities” between the two men when Diomaye Faye was in opposition. However, according to the editorialist, it is not surprising that the new head of state, “elected by his people” and not an imposter, chooses to fully assume his role by rubbing shoulders with his peers on the international scene.
“All of Africa likes to contemplate the first steps, on the international scene, of these leaders crowned with the real legitimacy of universal suffrage,” writes Mr. Placca, quoted here verbatim.
Diomaye Faye’s visit to Paris contrasts with “the fashion today to be in the ring with all those you don’t like or hate”, as the editorialist deplores. . A counterproductive posture which transforms “little by little certain peoples of the continent into pariahs”.
Should we see this as a “rally” or a “capitulation” of Senegal? Not at all according to Jean-Baptiste Placca: “States can do business without loving each other with mad love!” He takes the example of the complex but pragmatic economic relations between China and the United States, two powers grappling with “permanent tensions”.
“So many peoples prosper today by having only friends, even if it means adjusting their proximity to one or another, depending on the circumstances,” argues the editorialist. A path of reason and openness that Diomaye Faye and his counterpart Ousmane Sonko seem to be taking, they who “come from the body of the State” and “know everything about the imbalance, for ages, of Senegal’s balance of payments “.
Even if “a fringe of their activists” might be surprised by this “sudden” conciliation, the Senegalese president, unlike the opponent that he was, “must keep, in all circumstances, the sense of measure, the spirit of responsibility”. The joint press release published at the end of his meeting with Emmanuel Macron “shows that their president was treated with respect, and that the future of the relationship will be designed with mutual respect”.
Rather than the damaging “permanent tensions”, Mr. Placca sees in this rapprochement the opportunity for Senegal to “draw new advantages” from this historic partnership, at a time when the country is opening up to the “oil and gas”. A pragmatic diplomacy, in line with these “peoples [qui] thrive” today thanks to peaceful bonds with their partners, and not by giving in to “adventurous lacks of lucidity” which would lead to isolation.
