![Bassirou Diomaye Faye, destructive narratives and the next emotional fuse syndrome [Malick DIAGNE]](https://image.seneweb.com/content/news/2026-21-19//thumb_1260x800_6a0bbb5859321_jvmrrRg5V2.jpg)
Bassirou Diomaye Faye, des narratifs destructeurs et le syndrome du prochain fusible émotionnel [Malick DIAGNE]
Just two years after taking office, President Diomaye Faye is already facing destructive narratives about his presidency, which Cheikh Bara Ndiaye, Guy Marius Sagna, and their associates are working to forcefully delegitimize. Each of their public statements, each of their public interventions, contributes to the same objective: to transform the complex relationship between the President and his Prime Minister into a divisive, brutal, and violent narrative. They are adding fuel to the fire; they are appealing to the base instincts of the working class by designating a scapegoat for public outrage.
In this endeavor, they found allies and accomplices: social media transformed into a shadow play where nuance vanishes. In this respect, Cheikh Bara Ndiaye appears as a strangely contemporary figure of the new world being built at the expense of the elites. He understood that controlling the narrative is more decisive than all other communication tactics and strategies for seizing power. Truth matters little; the essential thing is to shout loudly, to offer prey to a people whose emotional charge is viral. The problem is that he no longer sets any limits to his excesses, including toward the presidential office, the last bastion of national cohesion and the shared desire to live together, of which the Constitution is the final bulwark. One question comes to mind.
How can we restore limits to transgression, morality, and rules to minds that ignore them? The answer to this question is not simple. Yet this is the new challenge facing Senegalese democracy, raising fears of the worst for the 2029 presidential election and the 2027 municipal and departmental elections. It's an open secret that the electoral behavior of Senegalese voters is inherently corrupted by mental biases that impair judgment and hinder the decision-making process. This persistent grounding of Senegalese electoral psychology in emotion also poses a broader mental health problem that must be considered a crucial challenge in discussions about future political reforms. Because by constantly pouring our resentments, anger, and superficial perceptions of injustice into the ballot box, we damage our judgment, undermine the integrity of the elections, and threaten the legitimacy of those we elect.
In his quest for popularity and legitimacy, Bassirou Diomaye Faye seems to have lost considerable ground in just two years in office. Never in Senegal's political history has a president been so thoroughly attacked on social media, with such effective staging that it has significantly weakened his standing in the eyes of the public.
He needs powerful counter-narratives to shift public opinion. But his public pronouncements, like his recent televised interview on May 2, 2026, are not going to help him change this negative perception. While the interview was likely intended to provide Senegalese citizens with a mid-term review, it instead revealed a duality at the highest levels of government that continues to stir up passions and pollute public debate. Furthermore, Senegalese citizens still lack sufficient clarity regarding the rationale behind the Diomaye President Coalition, which is largely perceived as the last vestiges of old-school politics, characterized by its recycling of supporters from the former regime, a political class out of touch with the aspirations of young people, a lack of exemplary conduct, and political opportunism.
The time has therefore come to move beyond ambiguity and the relics of the past, by profoundly changing the way we think about politics and public action, by fighting against inequalities and social problems that are eating away at the lives of the working classes, by putting in place, as a priority for young people, new tools for local initiatives and freedoms in service of a project of social transformation, by initiating actions that impact the lives of Senegalese people, bold reforms, a will, political courage and, in 3 years, a record that will support the expected popular support and new legitimacies including that of claiming a second term.
Malick DIAGNE
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