Down with the "muddying the waters" operation (By ALY NGOUILLE SARR)

"He is the first Prime Minister to benefit from it, and for reasons of transparency, the National Assembly must take a look at the use of the 1.77 billion he spent before leaving office." It is this short sentence, uttered on a program, while discussing the ambiguous relationship between the former "super" Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko and political funds, by the mayor of Linguère, Aly Ngouille Ndiaye, that has earned him a barrage of criticism from the Pastef party's smear campaign and its cronies.

Yet, "haram" was the word their leader had publicly used to describe the so-called political funds placed at the disposal of the Head of State, who uses them at his discretion. It was precisely this latitude that allowed the predecessors of His Excellency President Bassirou Diomaye Faye to extend these funds to their respective heads of government, hence the release of videos, once reviled, from the depths of manipulation, which testify to the use (the term is worth its weight in gold) of these funds by the latter.

Receiving funds at the president's whim is far from the same as being the designated recipient through perplexing budgetary artifices and mechanisms.

It is worth asking how our "classic" Prime Ministers were allocated these funds, and how 1.77 billion of our francs constantly fell into the coffers of the chief Pastefian during his two years as Prime Minister.

Babacar Gaye, former chief of staff to President Wade, lifts a corner of the veil:

“During Abdoulaye Wade’s presidency, the Prime Minister did not personally have budgetary allocations known as ‘political funds’. Every quarter, the President of the Republic allocated, from the funds voted to him by the National Assembly, to his Prime Minister, an allocation that could be considered as ‘political funds’.”

Ms. Marie Ross Faye, the current chief of staff to the president of the National Assembly, Mr. Ousmane Sonko, had herself clearly stated that the Prime Minister's office did not have political funds, as only the Presidency of the Republic was entitled to them. At the time, she was the government spokesperson. This statement contradicts that of Ousmane Sonko, who publicly asserted that he, too, had political funds.

The incongruity of this whole debate is that the champions of abolishing political funds are now justifying them by rejoicing in the pronouncements of people called "of the system".

The argumentative strategy employed since Aly Ngouille Ndiaye's statement deserves particular attention: the line of defense has shifted. It is no longer a question of denying the existence of political funds, but of trivializing them by placing them within a historical continuum: all Senegalese Prime Ministers before him have supposedly benefited from them (videos of Souleymane Ndéné Ndiaye and Macky Sall). This shift constitutes what political scientists call "neutralization by precedent": the contested act is no longer judged on its own merits, but diluted within a collective practice that supposedly lessens its moral weight. The issue is being obscured.

Those who had made transparency, resource rationalization and accountability essential markers of their political commitment hide behind the basic and laconic "everyone else did it" to justify their financial greed.

The shift from "we will eliminate this" to "we are not the only ones who have benefited from it" illustrates the classic tension, theorized by Max Weber, between the ethics of conviction displayed in opposition and the ethics of responsibility invoked once in power.

The question is not whether he is the only Prime Minister to have such funds at his disposal, but rather: how is it that Ousmane Sonko of Pastef, who promised to abolish them outright, has come to revel in them? On what legal basis were these funds allocated to him, through what mechanism did he obtain them, and how did he use them?

ALY NGOUILLE SARR,

Leader of the NEED and member of the PSD NDIARIÑ.