Two Weeks of Victory for Democracy in Senegal! (Yes, Senegal got a new President.)

By Jennifer Browning, MPA 2013

Poster of President-Elect Macky Sall as people celebrate his victory in Dakar. Benno Bokk Yaakaar means “People United with Hope” in Wolof.

(This is a follow-up to my earlier post I wrote before the elections, on February 26. You can read it here.)

Senegal has had plenty to celebrate in the past two weeks. The Senegalese elected a new President, Macky Sall; the former President Abdoulaye Wade peacefully stepped down and Sall was inaugurated on April 2; and Senegal celebrated its 52^nd Independence Day two days later on April 4. Macky Sall’s election is a victory for the youth and opposition protestors who had mobilized for weeks against a questionable third term bid by President Abdoulaye Wade. With a troubling coup in Mali only a few days before (see my classmate William Vu's post on 14 Points Blog on the coup in Mali here), Senegal once again demonstrated that it is the strong, stable democratic leader of the region.

However, Sall’s victory seemed far from assured before the first round of elections on February 26, 2012. The opposition was sharply divided, so people were unsure about which candidate would finish in the top two with Wade. There was a Princeton connection: opposition candidate Idrissa Seck spent a year at Princeton University as a visiting student. When President Wade failed to win a majority and the election headed into a two-candidate run off, the opposition was able to unite around Macky Sall. Sall won the run off with 68.5% of the vote.

Celebrations erupted around Senegal. This election really does belong to the young generation in Senegal. Young people led in many cases by smart and unapologetically critical rappers and followed by more seasoned opposition leaders had been rallying for almost a year to prevent President Wade from a third term.

This video gives a taste of Senegal’s unique sabar dancing, election euphoria style!

The voting also took place in the sizeable Senegalese diaspora. In Harlem and throughout the U.S., about 10,000 Senegalese people registered to vote. At a conference before the election, Columbia University Professor and head of the U.S. DECENA (Overseas Delegation of the Autonomous National Electoral Committee- Article in French on Diagne's Appointment) Souleymane Bachir Diagne explained that the Senegalese diaspora in the U.S. is much larger than 10,000. However, DECENA had challenges convincing many Senegalese immigrants, especially those who are undocumented, to sign up to vote. Apparently immigrants were worried that they could get into trouble with U.S. immigration authorities by voting.

Another problem voters faced is that while Senegal allows for absentee voting, would-be voters must declare the location where they will vote in advance, which can pose problems if they are not sure where they will be. However, despite these challenges, many Senegalese people did vote in Harlem, and throughout the U.S.

New York City had several polling stations- this is Wadleigh Middle School in Harlem.

I visited the election polling station at Wadleigh Middle School in Harlem during the first round. Along with DECENA staff, candidate representatives were present to observe the election and speak with interested voters. People presented their national ID and voter ID cards and then voted in one of the several first floor rooms. Professor Diagne recognized that requiring two IDs seems overly cumbersome and hopefully will change. I knew one Senegalese friend who did not vote because while he had his national ID card, he had misplaced his voter ID card.

Voting Room at Wadleigh Secondary School in Harlem after a long day. The candidates are featured on cards with their pictures during the first round. In the run-off election, only President Wade, 2^nd from left and Macky Sall, 4^th from left remained. The magenta dye was used to mark people who had voted and reduce risk of election fraud.

A Senegalese voter in Harlem shows his national ID and voter registration ID; both are necessary to vote. His dyed red fingertip marks that he voted.

List of candidates in the first round of elections on February 26, 2012. Abdoulaye Wade and Macky Sall would win out with 34.8% and 26.6% of the vote, respectively.

Voter registration and identification were not solely problems for the diaspora; President Wade’s government had not made it easy for many first time voters to register. Young adults were more likely to support the opposition, and with a very young population, they were an important factor in this election.

Youssou Ndour’s candidacy was not approved by the Constitutional Court. However, this catapulted him into a position of leadership of the opposition. President Macky Sall named Youssou Ndour his Minister of Culture. What many in the West do not realize is that in addition to being a world music star, Youssou is a very successful businessmen who has re-invested in Senegal, first creating a club where he performs most weekends when in town and then expanding to radio station, television channel, and music studio. While the Senegalese may not have been ready to make him President, they deeply appreciate his dedication to working in Senegal.

Macky Sall (left) and Youssou Ndour (right) at a public concert on April 3, 2012 in Dakar to celebrate President Sall’s inauguration.

Youssou Ndour’s decision to open another media outlet is also indicative of the exploding television outlets in Africa. If people are unsatisfied with the government controlled television coverage, they can simply switch to another channel. This proved very important in Senegal’s elections. In the first major protests against President Wade on June 23, 2011, many television stations actively covered center of events in front of the National Assembly building. However, if viewers had only had access to the RTS (the national television station), they may have believed that instead of the largest protests that their nation had seen in a decade, the main event that day was some renovation of the façade of the National Assembly building because that was all the RTS showed. They never turned their cameras to take footage of the thousands of protestors in front of the Assembly’s gates. In marked contrast, Youssou Ndour’s channel, (Télévision Futurs Médias) like several other private channels, featured breaking news and interviews with the protest’s leaders, ensuring that people were kept informed.

The RTS covers the incoming election results. If viewers wanted a more animated reporting, they had to switch to another channel.

Youssou Ndour may have grabbed headlines when he announced his Presidential bid on his own television station. However, the most influential musicians of election season have been rappers who started the movement “Y en a marre” (“We’ve had enough/ We are fed up”). Many young people in Senegal look up to rappers and hip hop artists who offer a witty critical commentary on society and politics. This activist critique of the status quo is largely absent from the type of music Youssou Ndour pioneered, mbalax.

Y en a marre is an ambitious movement that envisions an active citizenry pushing a transformation of Senegalese democracy. Professor Rosalind Fredericks described how Y en a marre even established “esprits” or groups with community discussions in neighborhoods where women and people of all ages participate actively. The rappers often served as spokesmen of the opposition even though they were not running for office. They used media and social network technology to mobilize people, especially youth.

Now that Y en a marre succeeded in thwarting Wade’s grab for a third term, the question is what next. In the past few weeks, cultural organizations have visibly funded several events but surely others outside of the foreign-funded cultural institutions have been organized. I think they are the expression of a real need and desire present in Senegal to celebrate but also to understand what happened and to ensure a future to the movement. As the poster on the left below has scrawled across it, “Résister, c’est le début de la victoire/Resistance is the beginning of victory.” But it is only a beginning.

Posters for events on the election protests. In the left poster, rapper, filmmaker, and intellectual Awadi is featured in a victory pose. At the event, he will speak with Thiat, a leader of Y en a marre and a rapper in the group Keur Gui and other intellectuals.

Macky Sall now has the privilege of being at the helm in a country where his people have laid out a hopeful, ambitious vision of the future. However, he surely also must know that if he falls short, if he too starts to overstep his power, there is a young generation that can mobilize to defend their democracy.

In the U.S., we too have elections approaching. I think my generation here has much to learn from our counterparts in Senegal. For democracy and freedom need vigilance and action. Otherwise, we risk losing it all.

Will Senegal Get a New President? An Analysis of the February 2012 Elections

By Jennifer Browning, MPA

Senegal’s elections are today. After months of mass protests against the current President Abdoulaye Wade’s candidacy, election day has finally arrived, amidst great anticipation and uncertainty. Many people are worried that President Wade, who is at least 85 years old, will win a controversial third term and worse, use his next term to install his son, Karim Wade. I am going to Harlem soon where there is a large Senegalese diaspora to follow news on the RTS (Radio Télévision Sénégalaise) and other Senegalese channels if available.

As is often stated, Senegal is the only country in West Africa that has had uninterrupted elections without military rule since Independence. It is considered by the international community to be a stable democracy that has escaped the fate of its neighbors.

Above, President Abdoulaye Wade, Feb. 23, 2012, approximately 85 years old.

And regional instability is a fact. I lived and worked in Senegal for three years until returning to the U.S. for graduate school last July 2011. During one nine month period (August 2008- March 2009), three of the five countries bordering Senegal experienced a coup. The fourth (internal) neighbor, The Gambia, has been ruled since 1994 by a dictator.

Senegal’s democracy stands in stark contrast to this trajectory. Senegal has achieved political stability, almost too much one could argue. For the first forty years, Senegal had only two different Presidents, Léopold Sédar Senghor followed by Abdou Diouf who both were part of the Socialist Party. Wade, leader of the Socialist Democratic Party, was the first opposition leader to be elected President in 2000. Despite the lack of power sharing in its first forty years, Senegal’s democracy stands as a great achievement post-colonialism in West Africa. Here we will not explore the possible contributions by the international community to some of this history of instability. Rather I want to focus on how the protests in Senegal have shown the importance of Senegalese people’s agency and commitment to democracy.

In late spring 2011, President Wade attempted to amend the constitution in a flagrant attempt to facilitate his victory today. He wanted to lower the percentage it would take to win the first round of the election (to win easily over a divided opposition) and create a Vice Presidency position (people worried for his son). On June 23, 2011, the biggest protests in a decade occurred in front of National Assembly in downtown Dakar and accompanied to a lesser extent, in cities throughout the country. The protests were successful in forcing Wade to withdraw his reform. They marked a turning point, and suddenly most radios and television stations aired aggressive critiques of Wade.

Protests on June 23, 2011 in Dakar against Wade’s proposed constitutional amendments.

I liked what candidate (and former longtime Minister of Foreign Affairs under Wade) Cheikh Tidiane Gadio said on a television interview I saw while visiting Senegal in early January 2012. To paraphrase loosely from my memory, Gadio stated, “June 23 has shown that Senegal can handle its own problems. Senegal does not need the international community to solve its domestic problems.” Certainly, the protesters handled the threat to their constitution with a mass mobilization and succeeded in forcing Wade to back down from the constitutional amendment.

Equally interesting, rappers have played a crucial role in the resistance against Wade. Senegal has one of the world’s most important hip hop scenes, and nothing mobilizes the youth in Senegal like smart, politically charged rap. A contingent of rappers formed the group “Y en a marre” or “We’ve had enough/We are fed up” to protest Wade’s candidacy and to call for voter registration and citizen participation in the elections. While this group along with M23, the Movement of the 23rd of June, have been very successful at mobilizing huge protests and using social and traditional media to get out their views, they do not officially endorse a candidate in the opposition.

Y en a marre rappers and protesters in Dakar.

A major obstacle to their movement has been the divided opposition. The protesters agree that Wade has to go, but there is no agreement on who should replace him. At a panel I attended at Columbia University a couple of weeks ago, Professor Mamadou Diouf highlighted three leading candidates Moustapha Niasse (who was a former strongman of the Socialist Party), Idrissa Seck (current Mayor of Thies and former Prime Minister under Wade for the Social Democratic Party (PDS)), and Macky Sall (who followed Idrissa Seck as Prime Minister under Wade).

Several opposition candidates, most famously the international music star, Youssou Ndour, were not allowed to run in the controversial decision by the Constitutional Court, who also issued a decision that Wade could run for a third term. I want to emphasize that the exclusion of Youssou Ndour’s candidacy has probably made him more important than if he had been allowed to run. I was in Senegal when he announced his decision to seek the Presidency early January 2012. While his declaration made international headlines, my impression was that most people take him seriously as a musician but not as a candidate. They often cited that he little formal schooling and therefore not qualified. However, his exclusion from being a candidate has made him an even more vocal critic and visible participant in the mass protests.

Youssou Ndour at a protest in Dakar where he was injured.

The constitutional court decision on January 27, 2012 that allowed Wade to seek a third term has been highly criticized by the opposition. However, Awadi, a leading rapper and intellectual in Senegal, may have found the most clever way of mocking the legality of President Wade’s candidacy. At the end of his new music video, Mame Boye, if you scroll to minute 2:46, Awadi creates a parody of the ataya tea drinking custom to criticize Wade’s bid for a third term. After meals in Senegal, people drink Mauritanian mint tea, ataya. In this highly ritualized tradition, you are offered a first cup of tea which is more bitter and then as the tea cooks down more, you are offered a second cup of tea which is sweeter.

For those that do not speak French, I will try to translate what unfolds...

In Awadi’s video, we have an old man (representing Wade) next to a younger, paler man (representing Karim whose mother is French and who speaks little Wolof, the dominant African language in Senegal). Wade asks for a second cup of tea, but the other young men making the ataya point out that he already drank his second cup. They then point to the “ataya constitution” that the old man has posted on the wall, clearly limiting everyone to two cups. Wade insists that he did not get a second cup, prompting a young man asks if he is losing his memory (a reference to his advanced age). So Wade finally asks for a third cup. When they refuse, he takes down the constitution and stands on it, saying, “Fine, I said only two; well, I take it back” referring to when he at one time said he would only stand for two terms. The ending caption says that “any resemblance to actual persons or events was entirely on purpose and not accidental. And that what is coming next [i.e. the elections] should really be watched.”

Awadi also mocks Wade’s attempt to install Karim in power by having Wade say when he learned that Karim bought the real Mauritanian tea, “ I will tell your mom that you did a good job./ Je dirais a ta maman que tu as bien travaillé.” In reality, Wade uttered this now famous phrase when praising Karim for his mdirection in organizing the Organization of the Islamic Conference meetings in Dakar in March 2008. The management of the OIC meetings was later criticized as being corrupt.

Local elections setback for presidential succession plans.

Despite the strong and highly mediatized protests by Y en a marre, M23, and other opposition groups, many people will vote for Wade. There have also been large protests in favor of Wade, although some people claim that Wade pays these supporters to show up. But Wade does have many legitimate supporters, and faced with a divided opposition, people may choose the evil that they know rather than the one they do not.

However, I believe though that if elections are transparent today, no candidate will get a majority and elections will thus advance to a second round with just two candidates, Wade and an opposition candidate. This may give the opposition the unity it has been lacking around one candidate.

I don’t want to see the hope broken for youth who have protested in this movement and tried to take charge of their democracy. I want what I want for my own country, that we believe the system can still be changed and we act to change it.

I’m off to Harlem.