“I didn’t do politics, because I hated politics. »
After days of tension between the Dia camp and that of Senghor, the President of the Council, Head of Government, Mamadou Dia was arrested with some of his faithful companions like Valdiodio Ndiaye, Ibrahima Sarr, Joseph Mbaye and Alioune Tall, on the orders of Senghor.
They will be judged during a political trial, condemned and locked up in the “penal colony” of Kédougou. What followed was a period of chaos in Senegal until 1970 with a constitutional reform establishing the post of PM and a presidential election in 1978 with the currents almost under supervision.
The path of African socialism advocated by Mamadou Dia, the economic course which was set following the meticulous work of Father Lebret’s teams, were abandoned in favor of “openness and rootedness, cultural mixing, the civilization of the universal and the year 2000 Dakar will be like Paris.” The consequence will be a country with an inward-looking economy, agricultural products mainly intended for export and hit by the deterioration of the terms of trade and to top it all off, an unhealthy dependence on development aid and financial institutions like the IMF and the World Bank.
Senegal thus missed its economic takeoff following a fallacious pretext for a coup d’état which was not one given that the President of the Council had all the powers and that the President of the Republic was only a honorary function, neither more nor less. The real motivation was yet another betrayal by Senghor, the preservation of the interests of a certain maraboutic class and French economic circles still omnipresent within the Dakar Chamber of Commerce.
Beyond the review of the trial and the rehabilitation of President Mamadou Dia and his companions; something promised by Professor Abdoulaye Wade but never kept, it is a question of putting the Citizen at the heart of public policies, supporting all Senegalese without distinction of ethnicity, religion or social condition, from the cradle to the grave leaving no one by the wayside. To live in a Senegal for all and a Senegal for all. Make the patriotic fiber beat in the heart of every Senegalese, every Senegalese without populism or demagoguery while respecting political divisions.
This piece of land located on the westernmost tip of Africa facing the Americas, steeped in history and a crucible of a mixture of peoples from Pharaonic Egypt, is well worth it because it was the ambition of this immense Statesman always copied and never equaled.
Ben Yahya SY
Grandson and disciple of the Great Maodo
Local
Senegal
