2024-03-31 07:40:00
From his remote village to the top of the state, Bassirou Diomaye Faye embodies the lightning rise of a man elected president of Senegal on the promise of radical change and under the leadership of a charismatic mentor.
The one that everyone calls “Diomaye” (“the honorable” in Serer), deputy of the leader Ousmane Sonko struck by ineligibility, was elected in the first round on March 24 with 54.28% of the votes, just ten days following being released from prison.
The vow of rupture, the anointing of Mr. Sonko and the apparent simplicity of this personality from a modest background allowed him to outperform the candidate of power by 18 points.
He is sworn in on Tuesday, becoming at 44 the fifth and youngest president of Senegal since Independence in 1960.
He stated “national reconciliation”, the reduction in the cost of living and the fight once morest corruption as his priority projects when, borrowed and stammering, he read in French and in Wolof his first public declaration following the victory, he who has never held the slightest elected office before.
Calling himself a “left-wing” pan-Africanist, he promised to reestablish a “sovereignty” that he believed was being sold off abroad and expressed his wish to put oil and gas contracts as well as fishing agreements back on the table.
He plans to leave the CFA franc and invest in the agricultural and industrial sectors to try to reduce unemployment, which officially stands at around 20%. He wants to rebalance international partnerships in a “win-win” sense and work for the return of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger to the Economic Community of West African States.
Plan B de Sonko
A senior official in the Tax Administration and areas where he met Ousmane Sonko, he discreetly took the steps in the latter’s shadow. His advent confirms the success of plan B of Mr. Sonko who, third in the presidential election in 2019 and disqualified in 2024, designated him as his replacement.
For three years, with the Pastef party created in 2014 by young public and private executives and since dissolved, they crossed swords with power, President Sonko multiplying at the forefront, Secretary General Faye active at the forefront. organization and doctrine.
They came out together following several months of imprisonment in mid-March, in the middle of the countryside thanks to an amnesty. They traveled the country together, then shared the task, drawing jubilant crowds behind the slogan “Sonko mooy Diomaye, Diomaye mooy Sonko” (“Sonko is Diomaye, Diomaye is Sonko”).
“They are two sides of the same coin with two different styles,” corroborates Moustapha Sarr, a trainer for Pastef activists.
It was Mr. Sonko who, during the last meeting of the campaign, presented to the crowd the two wives of “Diomaye”, Marie and Absa. Mr. Faye will be the first polygamous president of Senegal.
Often dressed in a traditional white boubou, of medium height, wearing a goatee under his youthful face, this practicing Muslim, father of four children, personifies a new generation of politicians.
Martial arts, reggae and Real
Bassirou Diomaye Faye was born into a humble and educated farming family in the village of Ndiaganiao, 150 km east of Dakar, at the end of a bumpy, sandy road. There, there is no health center or paved road. “Diomaye was a little shepherd who watched his goats,” remembers Mor Sarr, one of his best friends.
“Diomaye was always very close to his mother, Khady Diouf, whom he helped with household chores” following school, testifies Mr. Sarr.
Admirer of former American President Barack Obama and South African Nelson Mandela, fervent reader of psychology books, he is also a “big fan of Real Madrid and (Zinedine) Zidane”, the former French football player, martial arts and swimming enthusiast, and reggae fan, he reports.
This grandson of a rifleman, seriously wounded during the battle of Verdun (Eastern France) during the First World War, is “a good boy”, “very careful in his way of doing things” and “will be a connected president ” to the realities of the country, thinks his uncle and namesake, Diomaye Faye.
Bassirou Diomaye Faye left Ndiaganiao to study in Dakar, then join the prestigious National School of Administration in the capital. He said he comes back to the village regularly.
He presented himself during the campaign as someone “particularly reasoned, particularly reasonable, particularly sensible, particularly thoughtful.”
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