2023-07-02 16:10:25
When the constitution says that you have to be over 35 years old to claim to preside over the destinies of a Nation, we answer that it makes sense because you need, indeed, a minimum of life experience. When the constitution says that you must be under 75 to claim to lead the country, we answer that it is true that this constantly changing world does indeed require vigor and intellectual availability. But when this same constitution, under the pretext of a hypothetical “democratic breath”, imposes the disqualification of an outgoing candidate on the pretext that he has already exercised power long enough, we say that it seriously biases the democratic game.
But this debate relating to the constitution, we will raise it once more, in due time. Because we are not concerned today, by this question, in our country. The legal subject has effectively been decided since 2016 and the question of President Macky SALL’s candidacy for a second five-year term is exclusively and eminently political. It is therefore on the political level that my speech is part of today, in the continuity of the commendable initiative of the local elected representatives of our coalition.
Our country is at a crossroads. We are the last island of stability in the heart of a disturbing ring of fire. Our natural resources, which have taken on a new strategic status as a result of the war in Ukraine, are attracting much covetousness. Protean threats, endogenous and exogenous, hover above us the risk of nullifying decades of efforts to build the basis of progress. And we play to scare each other…
It is indisputable that the President of the Republic has already made history. His legacy is massive and powerful. Its assessment, material and immaterial, is of an unprecedented amplitude.
I will not lend myself to the perilous exercise of an exhaustive litany of the main components of this assessment; they impose themselves on everyone with the force of evidence. We can say without blinking that there is not a single Senegalese, anywhere in the territory, who has not been positively impacted, over the past 12 years, by the Yokkuté which has become PSE.
The most eloquent proof of the indisputable character of this transformational balance sheet is given to us by the opposition itself; by sticking to the question of the “3rd term”, she proves to us every day that she places all her hopes in a “disqualification on principle” to avoid the sanction of the ballot box.
What I would like to say to our President of the Republic, his Excellency Macky SALL, is that we know that when we have done so much, when we have so consented to the gift of self to the Nation, it can be tempted to hand over, to ask yourself the question of serving differently.
But by definition, the corollary of giving of oneself to the Nation is that you no longer belong to yourself. Senegal, the very one that you have “in your heart”, is worth all the sacrifices and among these, that of serving it for another 5 years, at the highest station. By duty and by necessity.
For the fatherland, first. I don’t think there has been a more critical and decisive moment in the history of our young nation. Never have experience and a sense of the state, weighting and moderation been so required. Staying the course is an absolute necessity, for social cohesion and the stability of the republican pact, to continue the march of progress. And no one other than you, Mr. President, can embody this reassuring and reassuring stature.
For the party, then. Excellency, Mr. President, you are the only fixed point of our coalition. It is through your political mastery that it holds and breaks all longevity records. You are the only vector of consensus and it is around your pragmatic vision that leftists and liberals, non-aligned people and technocrats from civil society have gathered. This hitch is yours, and yours alone.
We are ready, all of us, in our respective strongholds, to silence the fruitless differences and tensions for the continuation of our project until 2029 and beyond. The continuity of Senegal as we know it is at this price.
* Political leader of the Alliance for the Republic
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#Excellency #President #duty #necessity #Cheikh #Bakhoum
