What will Marine Le Pen’s trip to Senegal be about? The candidate beaten in the second round of the 2022 presidential election flew to Dakar on Monday, January 16, from which she will return on Friday, thus stepping over the social mobilization against the pension reform. But the program of his first African trip since 2017 remains secret by the National Rally (RN), which reserves the coverage of this visit to its communication team and selected media.
Six years ago, Marine Le Pen had obtained an interview with Idriss Déby, the president of Chad, which broke, according to her, “the barriers of ignorance and media stigma”. Alas, no African head of state has imitated the autocrat who disappeared in 2021, a sign that the positions of Mme Le Pen on immigration remain a major obstacle to normalized relations with Africa. The party does not confirm an interview with Macky Sall, the Senegalese president. The far right has too many memories of abortive meetings with foreign heads of state to rejoice in advance, especially in a country with close ties to Paris.
“There will always be last-minute pressures, but above all you must not bother the authorities of the country where you are going: this is the cardinal rule”, explains Marcel Ceccaldi, the lawyer who, for decades, has put his African networks at the service of Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter. Prevented by health problems – and a conviction, in December 2022, for influence peddling, which he appealed –, Mr. Ceccaldi did not contribute to the development of this trip, which is rather the work the mayor of Perpignan, Louis Aliot, the other “Mr. Africa” of the RN, and the former chief of staff of Marine Le Pen, Nicolas Lesage. But he does not envisage that the president of the RN group in the National Assembly has undertaken this trip without guarantees: “The Senegalese see what the political evolution of their privileged partner may be. It would be curious if Macky Sall could not accommodate the leader of the opposition. No doubt he is preparing a credible alternation in France. »
In the event of a meeting, she will repeat her wish, already expressed during the presidential campaign, that Senegal be the African country permanently represented on the United Nations Security Council, in the very unlikely event of a reform of its functioning. The RN says he appreciates the “concern for geopolitical balance” of Macky Sall, who abstained, at the UN, from condemning the Russian aggression in Ukraine, and visited Vladimir Putinin June 2022, as the current Chairperson of the African Union.
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