2023-06-21 09:59:00
The events of June 2023 made it possible to highlight the crisis of anticipation at the heart of public action and within the techniques of popular mobilization of the opposition.
“To govern is to foresee and not to foresee anything is to run to ruin” said Emile de Girardin.
On the side of the State, before the verdict was pronounced condemning Mr. Sonko to two years in prison for an “offence of corruption of youth”, the prefect of Dakar had prohibited the retail sale of gasoline and the circulation of motorcycles. Admittedly, this is a salutary decision but insufficient from the point of view of anticipation insofar as there were already in the public space warning signs that a hypothetical conviction of the president of Pastef would lead to an overreaction from certain militants of the opposition.
Other additional measures should have been taken – by way of illustration – a decree, an order implementing the decree of the Minister of the Interior formally prohibiting any demonstration in public space until further notice on all or part of the extent of the national territory.
This decision to ban any demonstration linked to the announcement of the verdict could have been followed, for example, by the deployment of the army at all strategic points in the national territory. Such a preventive and dissuasive approach would be justified for the needs related to the preservation of public order, the safety of citizens, critical infrastructures, public and private property, etc.
Such an approach is resolutely in line with the modes of action of a strategic State.
Obviously, it is illusory to think that the State of Senegal has the means to place a policeman, a gendarme behind each Senegalese or house, public building or company of the private sector.
On the side of the opposition’s methods of action, particularly with regard to the organization of a “freedom caravan” linking the city of Ziguinchor to Dakar, the Senegalese capital, via various localities in the country, a word order was given by its leader to “dislodge” President Macky Sall, whose presidential mandate is in progress.
The freedom caravan was stopped and the opposition leader was transported by the defense and security forces to his home in Dakar and his house surrounded. In response, a new watchword was given to “militants to stand mobilized” before the pronouncement of the conviction of the leader of the opposition without anticipating the consequences of such an announcement. We did not at all imagine how all this would be understood, deciphered by the militants. Result of the races: we know the rest of the damage…following the pronouncement of the sentence of the leader of Pastef to “two years in prison for corruption of youth”.
But it is never too late to correct the errors of the past by mobilizing corrective measures to improve processes.
It follows from the above that the culture of anticipation is not sufficiently developed in the methods of intervention of the State and the modes of action of the political parties.
Reminder of recommendation no. 1: A culture of anticipation must be developed in the modes of action of the State and in political practices.
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