APA-Dakar (Senegal) The popularity rating of President Macky Sall’s favoured presidential aspirant to replace him is apparently on the rise.
Often criticised for his perceived lack of popularity, Amadou Ba, the ruling coalition’s man for the forthcoming presidential elections took a walk on Wednesday 27 December on the BRT line, one of outgoing President Sall’s last major public transport projects.
At the new Petersen Bus Rapid Transfer (BRT) junction in the centre of Dakar, Prime Minister Amadou Ba was the attraction of the afternoon.
A few minutes after the arrival of the administrative authorities and ministers of his government, such as Mansour Faye, head of the Infrastructure and Land Transport Department and brother-in-law of the outgoing head of state, the man who wants to succeed Macky Sall in 2024 was expected to give the go-ahead for a visit to the installations of the BRT project in its final phase.
Opposite the station, a handful of people were singing and dancing in honour of the local politician, the socialist mayor of Dakar-Plateau, Alioune Ndoye, and the candidate of the Benno Bokk Yakaar coalition (BBY, united under the same hope), who is always expected to attend solemn occasions like the big names.
As we boarded the spacious, air-conditioned BRT buses with around a hundred media representatives, a large crowd gathered behind us to announce Amadou Ba’s arrival and the convoy’s departure.
Along the corridor, cheerful people waved placards showing their support for the 62-year-old who, unlike many of his party colleagues, has won the confidence of Macky Sall for the forthcoming elections, the first round of which is scheduled for 25 February 2024.
“I find him amorphous. I don’t think he shows enough to the Senegalese, to the people in his majority, that he has the shoulders, that he has what it takes. He needs to get moving, he needs to reach out to the people, he needs to reassure the majority,” former minister and advisor Souleymane Jules Diop, now Senegal’s ambassador to UNESCO, recently told a local private radio programme.
A second inauguration in 2024
Although this is the “first phase of the inauguration” of the BRT, with the second scheduled for 14 January under President Macky Sall, Amadou Ba was keen to step out of the shadow of the current president on Wednesday, as has been his habit of late. He arrived in the Liberté 6 district on the outskirts of the city in the early evening and, wearing a beige African suit and transparent glasses, came down smiling to cut the ribbon in national colours, although the manoeuvre was complicated by people wanting to greet him or jostle for a photo opportunity.
The 18.3-kilometre route, which will cross fourteen of the capital’s municipalities and link the city centre with the densely populated Guédiawaye department, is attracting a great deal of attention. According to the Conseil Exécutif des Transports Urbains de Dakar (Cetud), one of the government bodies responsible for implementing the project, which has cost 419 billion CFA francs (69% from the Senegalese state and 31% from development partners), the 144 buses, each of which can carry 150 passengers, will reduce journey times from an average of 95 minutes to 45 minutes.
The arrival of the BRT is motivated by the demographic challenges facing Dakar, the smallest region in Senegal (0.3% of the national territory) but one of the largest urban agglomerations in Africa, with a population of four million in 2023 and, according to demographic projections, seven million by 2040. This situation correlates with a possible “doubling of demand” in the number of daily trips by 2035, to the tune of 14.5 million.
In addition, a study updated to 2022 shows that the Senegalese economy “loses 900 billion CFA francs per year due to problems related to car pollution, congestion, road safety and noise”, losses equivalent to 6% of national GDP. Faced with this negative impact, the authorities have decided to “focus on collective and clean mobility systems” such as the BRT, which will offer users “100% electric” buses and “stations that will eventually be powered by solar energy”, thus helping to combat climate change and unemployment by creating “1,000 direct jobs”.
Amadou Ba, another Macky Sall?
Arriving just before nine o’clock at Parcelles Assainies, his political stronghold in the suburbs of Dakar, where the visit was to end, Amadou Ba didn’t have time to explain all these parameters to the journalists who had come to meet him, as supporters and onlookers came from everywhere. Flanked by his party comrades and local political leaders, whose fighters vied with each other using posters and banners, the Prime Minister did not hear a young man, filming with his mobile phone and walking through the crowd and heckling in Wolof: “Li lène Macky Sall jox, dello léne ko askanwi” (Give back to the people what Macky Sall gave you).
In the melee that followed, Aliou Sall’s bodyguard used his imposing figure to clear the way for the former mayor of Guédiawaye and brother of the head of state, who arrived at the ceremony in a rush so as not to miss the cutting of the second ribbon of the first phase of the inauguration of the BRT by the BBY presidential aspirant.
All this less than two months before a hotly contested election in which, according to the daily EnQuête, “at least 95 people have succeeded” in submitting their candidacy which will be assessed by the Constitutional Council to determine whether they will run in the election of Senegal’s fifth president since independence.
ODL/ac/lb/as/APA