For the first speech of the Head of State on the occasion of the New Year, we expected a keynote speech focused on the future for the one who defines the policy of the Nation, according to our current political regime. We have witnessed a discourse centered on good democratic governance, of course, but a discourse which ignores the essential economic and social conditions in our emerging societies.
We agree that, in a parliamentary type regime in which the Prime Minister defines the policy of the Nation, the President of the Republic could do without such a communication exercise on economic and social perspectives, but we do not We are not there yet, although the evolution and atomicity of the political space require us to move towards the centrality of national representation in the definition of public policies.
The economic and social questions in the address of the Head of State to the Nation on the occasion of the New Year were the most important and most anticipated questions, because of their weight on the conditions of life and existence populations, and in view of the multiple deteriorations noted on this level in all sectors of activity which are the basis of the concerns of the Senegalese masses for the future. We have heard nothing about the rural world and the agricultural marketing campaign which occupies a good part of the active population, nor about the general level of prices which has seen an increase, nor about the employment prospects of young people, which are major concerns, as well as the solutions envisaged for the mitigation of illegal emigration, neither on the envisaged increase in taxes and the broadening of its base, nor on the much abused currency and on the evolution of growth economy, the budget deficit and debt, etc.
We were treated to a speech focused on good governance and the past, on the colonial history of Senegal with narratives on the Senegalese riflemen during the two world wars or on slavery, as if these parts of history of humanity have just occurred: in reality, a discourse more backward-looking than progressive. President Senghor and President Mamadou Dia ultimately only spoke of development in the medium-long term and defined socialism as the “development of man, of all man and all men”, that is to say -say the development of human capital, not to say human development, the ultimate goal of political action. It must be recognized that in this area, we have not yet reached the expected levels of development.
Let us not forget that family security grants have been interrupted, whereas they should be generalized and increased, in line with oil and gas exploitation. Let us not forget that social housing projects such as those that previously existed with Sicap, Hlm, Parcelles Assainies, Zac or other housing developments have been suspended.
Let us not forget that important projects in the country such as the construction of hospitals, roads, ports or bridges or flyovers are at a standstill. Now, the public authorities are attacking the bureaucracy and civil servants, their assets, everything relating to the property of economic agents, without focusing on economic and social planning, the main contradiction.
President Bassirou Diomaye Diakhar Faye is certainly a courageous man, in good faith like a good Serer with the best intentions. However, we have the impression that he is surrounded or overwhelmed by old veteran politicians with Trotskyist methods, who have faded under the harness of the Republic. These old veteran politicians, long banned from successive powers since the reign of the socialist regime, are in the spirit of a revisionism which often takes us back to the past. The revisionist, not to say reformist, spirit most often results from an attempt to take revenge on the history of the old hands of the old anti-imperialist policy, as if we were still under neo-colonialist tutelage, whereas this is no longer the case today. We are in a world where States have become free, but participate in tactical alliances for their collective security, in which new challenges are being played out in suborbital spaces and the oceans, in the age of Artificial Intelligence for intelligence. and robotics.
The symbolic military presence of French and American forces in Dakar is focused mainly on security control in the North and South Atlantic where Senegal weighs in. The real military forces are no longer on land, they are in the oceans and in suborbital spaces for vital intelligence, the rest is carried out by unmanned flying vehicles or drones, the doctrine having fundamentally changed on this level. Senegal and African countries had anticipated well with Intelsat or the creation of Asecna whose headquarters and some technical equipment for the safety of air navigation are at the strategic point of Dakar.
Nowadays, the sovereignist or nationalist rhetoric that often recurs in official political discourse is obsolete. We have long since entered a world where borders have formally disappeared to make way for a dominant internationalism or a convergence of systems.
Often returning to the misdeeds of the past and not focusing more on the issues and challenges of the future, seems to me to be revisionism spiced up with the sauce of supporters of entryism, permanent revolution, cyclical alliances, hostility against the bosses or simply, Trotskyists hiding in the mysteries of power.
Kadialy GASSAMA
Economist
Rue Faidherbe
Rufisque
