One of my teachers at the National School of Administration used to tell us: « In the Service of the State you have to be an active person and not an activist. » The small handful of deputies of the 14th legislature who organised a demonstration in front of the gates of the National Assembly on February 23 would have benefited from listening to these words of this old veteran of the State. These people are excessive and confuse activism with parliamentarianism, but the two do not have the same nature or the same purpose. The Parliament of the Republic is too serious a body to import the childish practices of public street agitators.
There are practices from nonparty protest movements that are propelled into a space whose sacredness should call for moderation, restraint and height. In the anti-capitalist currents, there are several actions ranging from happenings to stunt operations to offend, alert and overflow the classic practices of protest. Stunts are allowed and can even be useful, sometimes because of the avant-garde nature of the causes and ways of acting. Activists from radical feminist, environmentalist, LGBT and anti-nuclear movements sometimes defend their causes by favouring the shock of images and words over reasonable and calm debate.
What is acceptable for non-party activists and militants cannot be so for men and women who have the privilege and honour of being elected representatives of the Nation, and as such, they are not plus the deputies of a faction, a region, a clan or a populist and Salafist project. They are the legitimate representatives of the Nation enjoying the greatest confidence in democracy: that of their fellow citizens. The deputies of the Pastef party, who are at the origin of this childishness, should finally show themselves worthy of it and rise to the height of the demands of democratic debate and of the Republic, our common allegiance, even if I myself have believed for a long time in the anti-republicanism of this party.
Nearly ten years ago, my friend, the late Alioune Badara Cissé, and I had a fruitful discussion on the philosophy of representation, on the sacredness of the power delegated to us and the importance of conveying to the heart of institutions the concerns of citizens in the system of a representative democracy while never separating from the requirement of knowledge, argumentative rigour and moderation.
I was appalled a few months ago when I saw parliamentarians wearing red armbands in the Hemicycle. This after they had desacralised, through fights, insults, abuses and excesses, the flagship place of oral confrontation in democracy. These acts of barbarism of September 12, 2022, will remain among the worst moments in our political history, coinciding with the entry into Parliament for the first time of dozens of fascist MPs who hate the Republic and its symbols. Their objective is clear. They seek by a resolute and methodical enterprise to clobber the institutions of the Republic, starting by extracting from its heart argued debate and the civilised dispute.
Democracy is an aristocracy of orators from Greece. The nation’s elected representatives should compete with each other to seduce, convince and persuade through the right word and beautiful eloquence. It is the word that must rise high in the sky of the Hemicycle and not the blows, the sulks and the sit-ins to « make the buzz ».
One of the organisers of February 23 demonstration in front of the Parliament justifies the act: « We thought it necessary to protest against this situation of dysfunction, of lethargy, to call for this peaceful gathering in front of the gates of the National Assembly, to tell the Senegalese that the representatives of the people are tied up, gagged and cannot exercise their mandate properly. » A member of parliament has the constitutional means to represent his fellow citizens with dignity and relevance. A member of the majority has the duty to go beyond the status of praise singers of their leader and an elected member of the opposition can free himself from insulting and displaying a red armband or engaging in a ridiculous street demonstration to exist. An elected representative of the Nation is not a clown or a fairground beast. We must stop this new attitude of ridiculing our country in front of the cameras of the whole world. We must remain the beacon of democracy in Africa, a country whose political field is irrigated by ideas.
A deputy is the representative of the people, and nothing is more sacred in a democracy than to carry the word and the hope of one’s own. Sometimes I look at Senegal and a great state of sadness overtake me; I think then of this sentence of Bernanos: “It is hard to see degrade before your eyes what you were born to love.”
By Hamidou ANNE / hamidou.anne@lequotidien.sn
- Translation by Ndey T. SOSSEH / Serigne S. DIAGNE
