On the brink of becoming Senegal’s youngest president, Basirou Diomey Faye, close to Sonko

Published on: 03/25/2024 – 5:50 p.mModified: 03/25/2024 – 6:07 PM

4 minutes

He wanted to be a “candidate for system change” in Senegal. At the age of 44, Basirou Diomay Faye is on track to win the presidential election on Monday 25 March after government candidate Amadou Bae conceded defeat.

The partial results published in the media and on social networks put Basirou Diomay Faye clearly ahead of his main competitor, and far ahead of others.

While he has never held an elected office, in November 2023 he was nominated as a candidate to replace Ousmane Sonko, from whom he was the second head of the Senegalese party African Patriots Work, Morality and Fraternity (PASTEF) was dissolved slightly. months earlier by officials.

Imprisoned since April 2023 for contempt of court, defamation and acts likely to disturb the public peace, Basirou Diomay Faye nevertheless missed a large part of the official campaign, which began on 9 March. He was also prevented from recording his election campaign messages for public television.

But he was finally released on March 15, nine days before the first round of the presidential election, after President Mackie Saul adopted the desired amnesty law.

Inseparable from Ousmane Sonko

“Diomaye Mooye Osmane” (“Diomaye is Osmane”). These were the words of supporters in Wolof during the presidential campaign. For him, Basirou Dimaye Faye and rival Osmane Sonko are inseparable. “Basiro, it’s me,” also said of his lieutenant Osman Sonko, third in the presidential election in 2019 and ineligible in 2024 after a three-year standoff with power.

Coming from a modest farming family, Basirou Dimay Faye took the ANA (National School of Administration) entrance exam in Senegal. After becoming a tax inspector, he met Osmane Sonko at Tax and Domains. “Diomaye” followed him into the autonomous union of tax and land agents that he created. He then joined Pastef, of which he was the first guest before becoming its key figure and secretary general, according to the party, which described him as a “brilliant mind”, “cold in analysis”. Sensing Osman Sonko’s disqualification in the presidential election, his camp championed him.

“They are two sides of the same coin with two different styles,” explains Mustafa Sir, a trainer for Pastef activists.

Ousmane Sonko, 49, was the undisputed candidate for the Pastef party, which he helped build in 2014 after saying youth were alien to politics. His disqualification by the Constitutional Council in January brought his second, more sensible Basirou Diomaye Faye out of his shadow.

A new generation

Often dressed in a traditional white boubou, of medium height, with a goatee under his young face, Basirou Diomey Faye appeared on stage with his two wives during his last election rally, the first for a Senegalese president.

Against hyper-presidentialism, this practicing Muslim presents himself as the avatar of a new generation of politicians. They highlight their pan-African values, their desire to maintain their country’s sovereignty, to distribute wealth more equitably, and to reform a corrupt justice system. To mark his “transparency”, he published his wealth declaration on the last day of the campaign.

He has pledged to renegotiate oil and fishing agreements and says he is not afraid to give up the CFA franc, including creating a new national currency, a measure that his opponent Amadou Ba has denounced as economic “nonsense”.

His opponents accuse him of being the head of “adventurers” ready to pursue a policy of dangerous rupture in a country renowned for stability in West Africa.

Basirou Diomey Faye presents himself as “particularly rational, particularly reasonable, particularly wise, particularly considerate”.

After voting on Sunday, he called for a “definite return to peace” in Senegal “which has been seriously disrupted in recent years”.

With AFP and Reuters