Bassirou Diomaye Faye, Ousmane Sonko’s Plan B – Technologist

The jubilation that surrounded Ousmane Sonko and Bassirou Diomaye Faye, in Ziguinchor (South) on Saturday, March 16, may have given their rivals for the presidential election in Senegal a few scares. Two days after their release from prison thanks to an amnesty law, the two leaders of the Patriotes Africains du Sénégal pour le Travail, l’Ethique et la Fraternité (Pastef), a party dissolved in July 2023, were able to show off their popularity at the launch of their campaign for the March 24 ballot in the capital of Casamance, where Senegal’s main opponent is the mayor. Sonko’s name was on everyone’s lips. “Sonko, we missed you!,” “May God give Sonko victory,” chanted their supporters as their motorcade passed.

However, it’s not the former Pastef’s number one who will be running for president, but his second-in-command and fellow former prisoner, Faye. Wearing a white hooded sweatshirt and a cap emblazoned with “Diomaye president,” he greeted the militants, perched on the roof of his vehicle, with the gestures of a candidate fully on the campaign trail. It’s an ambitious gamble for a man who will be celebrating his 44^th birthday the day after the first round of voting, who has just been released from 335 days’ pre-trial detention for “contempt of court” and “calling for insurrection,” and who has been thrust into the limelight by a political stroke of fate.

Co-founder of Pastef in 2014, the party’s current general secretary has always been the discreet right-hand man of Sonko, who was ruled out of the presidential race by the Constitutional Council after being convicted of libel by the courts. The decision to make Faye “plan B” for the election was made official at the end of December. “I’m a substitute candidate because it was our way of imposing our presence in this electoral contest,” he admitted without any false modesty.

Over the years, a rare intimacy has developed between the two 40-somethings, who both came from the tax inspectorate. “Bassirou even nicknamed his son Ousmane in honor of their friendship. It’s a brotherly relationship,” said Ousseynou Ly, a member of the ex-Pastef’s communications team. To “presidentialize” the image of this man from the shadows, the party’s executives play on the similarity of the two men’s backgrounds, hammering home the message “Diomaye moy Sonko, Sonko moy Diomaye” (“Diomaye is Sonko, Sonko is Diomaye,” in Wolof).

Discreet and calm

In 2014, at the age of 34, Faye, an alumnus of the Ecole Nationale de l’Administration (ENA), made his mark during the meetings that led to the creation of Pastef. He would go on to become one of the ideologues and designers of Sonko’s program for his presidential candidacy in 2019. It was a stroke of genius: In his first election, the Pastef leader garnered almost 16% of the vote and came third.

But it was when the “Sweat Beauty” affair erupted in February 2021 that Faye really came into his own. Following the arrest of Sonko, who was accused of repeated rape by a massage parlor employee, Pastef lost its charismatic leader. With several executives arrested, Faye took over and became the party’s general secretary. “He infused the party with his serenity and rigor, channeling our rage. For him, we had to keep our cool to confront the powers that be. He’s not a supporter of violent action,” said Ly.

As part of its strategy to win power, the party attempted to unite the opposition for the 2022 local elections. “He is at the heart of negotiations with allies, as he was when the Yewwi Askan Wi coalition was created,” said his representative Amadou Ba (no relation to the former prime minister, a candidate of the ruling party).

At the heart of the former-Pastef machine, Faye stands out from the party boss. While Sonko appears talkative and eruptive, his second-in-command has made discretion and calmness his trademark. “He’s flexible when the argument presented follows a coherent line, but he can be rigid if someone doesn’t have solid arguments to back up an idea. Debates are difficult,” said Makhtar Seck, a member of the Pastef cadre movement, led by Faye.

At the head of the tax agents’ union

Like Sonko, his “double” became politicized during his time at the Direction Générale des Impôts et Domaines (DGID). It was there that the two agents and other co-founders of the ex-Pastef, such as Birame Souleye Diop and Walyd Diouf Badian, met.

All of them have been members of the Syndicat des Agents des Impôts et Domaines (SAID), which Sonko founded in 2006 with Mame Boye Diao, whose real name is El Hadji Mamadou Diao. This former director of estates, who is close to President Macky Sall and a presidential candidate, makes no secret of his friendly relations with Sonko. It was also here that the ex-Pastef gang rubbed shoulders with Ba, the current government candidate and former prime minister, who was then director of this administration.

During his time at the head of the union, Faye campaigned to facilitate homeownership for tax and property agents. “They had difficulties acquiring land because some people appropriated it and resold it to their detriment. The union worked to distribute them transparently to hundreds of agents, and Bassirou Diomaye Faye had a lot to gain in this respect,” said Waly Diouf Badian, a member of Sonko’s cabinet and Faye’s former line manager at the DGID. “He was respected and he followed up well, but he didn’t have any more impact on the union than his predecessors,” said Diao.

As a symbol, Faye was arrested on the evening of Friday, April 14, 2023, as he left his tax and property office on Rue de Thiong in Dakar, then taken into police custody for “spreading false news, contempt of court and defamation of a constituted body” after publishing a post on social media. In it, he condemned the “trampling” of the justice system, anticipating a conviction that would render Sonko ineligible in the case pitting his leader against the Minister of Tourism, Mame Mbaye Niang. Along the way, these charges were joined by those of “calling for insurrection” and “undermining state security,” which prolonged his detention.

‘Anti-system’ and ‘pan-African’

Faye has proved to be a perfect right-hand man, to the point of arousing the same controversy as Sonko. While Ba, the ruling party’s candidate, has described the pair as a “danger” to Senegal, the two men are regularly described as “Salafists” by their detractors in a country shaped by Sufi confraternity Islam. The subject is a sensitive one, but their supporters are on the sidelines.

“We don’t want to get involved in religious, ethnic or identity issues. We’ve refused to use the brotherhoods because, behind them, there’s always haggling to receive this or that support. We don’t proselytize to confirm the allegiance of this or that marabout,” said Ba, Faye’s representative, who points out that the Yewwi Askan Wi coalition won the July 2022 legislative elections in Touba and Tivaouane, bastions of the religious brotherhoods. Faye promises not to touch “secularism, which is enshrined in the Constitution.”

Criticized for his lack of experience as an elected official and his failure in the 2022 municipal elections in Ndiaganiao (Mbour region), his home town, Faye, who describes himself as “anti-system” and “pan-African,” can nevertheless count on the territorial network of the former-Pastef and its allies, as well as a strong presence on social media.

The party is electrifying a significant proportion of the youth, waiting for prospects, but is also mobilizing among the intellectual elite and civil servants. Faye’s program is in line with Sonko’s for 2019. Prominent among these are a pledge to fight corruption and, he says, the French “economic stranglehold” on Senegal. Sonko proposes to leave the CFA franc, abolish the post of prime minister and create a post of vice-president elected in tandem with the head of state, reduce the powers of the French president, suspend the fisheries agreement with the European Union and re-evaluate the oil and gas contracts due to come into effect this year. These are just a few of the proposals, but they leave open the question of what role Sonko will play if his “understudy” wins.