Foreign
Senegal election result: Bassirou Diomaye Faye to become Africa’s youngest president
“Politics never crossed my mind,” says the tax collector and husband to two wives
Few had heard of him a year ago, and now he is set to become president.
Bassirou Diomaye Faye’s extraordinary rise caps a rollercoaster period in Senegalese politics that caught many off-guard.
Months in jail alongside ally and kingmaker Ousmane Sonko ended suddenly, with the pair released the week before the presidential election.
Now Mr Clean, as he’s nicknamed, must get to work on the sweeping reforms he has promised.
“Methodical” and “modest” are words often used to describe the tax collector, who celebrates his 44th birthday on Monday.
Mr Faye fondly recalls his rural upbringing in Ndiaganiao, where he says he returns every Sunday to work the land.
His love and respect for village life is matched by his deep distrust of Senegal’s elites and establishment politics.
“He’s never been a minister and wasn’t a statesman so critics question his lack of experience,” analyst Alioune Tine tells the BBC.
“But, from Faye’s point of view, the insiders who’ve run the country since 1960 have made some catastrophic failures.”
Fighting poverty, injustice and corruption are top of Mr Faye’s agenda. While working at the Treasury, he and Mr Sonko created a union taskforce to tackle graft.
Gas, oil, fishing and defence deals must all be negotiated to better serve the Senegalese people, says Mr Faye.
He is ushering in an era of “sovereignty” and “rupture” as opposed to more of the same, he told voters, and that is especially true of ties to France.
Senegal’s president-elect says he will drop the much-criticised CFA franc currency, which is pegged to the euro and backed by former colonial power France.
Mr Faye wants to replace it with a new Senegalese, or regional West African, currency, although this will not be easy.
“He will have to deal with the reality of the budget to begin with… But I see that he has a lot of ambition,” former Prime Minister Aminata Touré, who served under outgoing President Macky Sall, tells the BBC.
Strengthening judicial independence and creating jobs for Senegal’s large young population are also key priorities for Mr Faye – neither of which “President Sall paid much attention to and it caught up with him”, Ms Touré adds.
She is not the only political heavyweight to have thrown her support behind the 44-year-old – former President Abdoulaye Wade did the same just two days before Sunday’s vote.
It is a remarkable turnaround for Mr Faye who spent the last 11 months in prison on charges of insurrection, and many more years before that in his ally’s shadow.
‘Bassirou is me’
Bassirou Diomaye Faye was announced in February as the so-called “Plan B” candidate, replacing the charismatic opposition firebrand Ousmane Sonko. “I would even say that he has more integrity than me,” Mr Sonko said proudly.
Both men founded the now-disbanded Pastef party, both men are tax collectors, and both men found themselves jailed last year on charges they said were politically motivated.
Mr Sonko ended up being convicted of two offences, which meant he was barred from the election, so Mr Faye stepped in.
“Bassirou is me,” Mr Sonko told supporters recently. “They are two sides of the same coin,” Pastef colleague Moustapha Sarré agrees.
This has led to criticism that Mr Faye is merely “president by default”.
Not so, says analyst Mr Tine. But the pair’s relationship could usher in a new style of leadership.
“Maybe they will establish a tandem and break away from the hyper-presidential model of having an all-powerful head of state.
“Sonko is of course the uncontested leader of Pastef – an icon, even… [But] the two have had a [dynamic of] complicity and collusion.”
Once upon a time, Mr Faye wanted nothing to do with politics. “It never crossed my mind,” he said in 2019 while recalling his childhood.
One of Mr Faye’s heroes is the late Senegalese historian Cheikh Anta Diop – whose work is seen as a precursor to Afrocentrism. Both are seen as left-wing cheerleaders for pan-Africanism.
As early results came in on Monday showing Mr Faye was set for victory, people in the capital, Dakar, celebrated by honking car horns and singing to loud music.
The reaction from international markets was less jubilant, with Senegal’s dollar bonds falling to their lowest level in five months. Reuters news agency reports that investors are concerned Mr Faye’s presidency may wind down the country’s business-friendly policies.
The election was originally due last month but Mr Sall postponed it just hours before campaigning was set to begin, triggering deadly opposition protests and a democratic crisis.
Most candidates had very little time to prepare once the new election date was set – but Mr Faye had just over a week after being freed from jail.
Despite the shortened campaign period, Senegal’s citizens were adamant they would turn out and use their vote, Christopher Fomunyoh – of the National Democratic Institute for international affairs – told BBC Newsday.
“Senegal is in the process of confirming that democracies can self-correct and come out stronger and more resilient.”
And the true test for Senegal’s clean-up guy has only just begun.
Foreign
There will be no same sex marriage again -Trump vows to end ‘transgender madness ‘
President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday pledged to “stop the transgender lunacy” on day one of his presidency, as Republicans — set to control both chambers of Congress and the White House — continue their push against LGBTQ rights.
“I will sign executive orders to end child sexual mutilation, get transgender out of the military and out of our elementary schools and middle schools and high schools,” the president-elect said at an event for young conservatives in Phoenix, Arizona.
He also vowed to “keep men out of women’s sports,” adding that “it will be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.”
Speaking to the AmericaFest conference in a border state he easily carried in the November election, Trump further promised immediate measures against “migrant crime,” vowed to designate drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and doubled down on his talk of restoring US control of the Panama Canal.
Transgender issues have roiled US politics in recent years, as Democratic- and Republican-controlled states have moved in opposite directions on policy such as medical treatment and what books on the topic are allowed in public or school libraries.
Last week, when the US Congress approved its annual defense budget, it included a provision to block funding of some gender-affirming care for the transgender children of service members.
In his speech Sunday, which amounted to something of a victory lap, Trump made expansive promises for his second term — and drew a dark picture of the four years preceding it, under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the latter of whom he defeated in the 2024 election.
“On January 20, the United States will turn the page forever on four long, horrible years of failure, incompetence, national decline, and we will inaugurate a new era of peace, prosperity and national greatness,” Trump said, referring to his swearing-in.
– ‘Golden age’ –
“I will end the war in Ukraine. I will stop the chaos in the Middle East, and I will prevent, I promise, World War III.”
He added: “The golden age of America is upon us.”
Foreign
Fresh Israeli Airstrikes In Gaza Kill 25 Palestinians Including Children
Fresh Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip have killed at least 25 Palestinians, according to medics.
The casualties on Friday included at least eight people in an apartment in the Nuseirat refugee camp and 10 others in the town of Jabalia, among them seven children.
Efforts to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas have yet to succeed.
Sources involved in the negotiations told Reuters on Thursday that Qatar and Egypt had resolved some points of contention but key issues remain unresolved.
Israel launched its assault on Gaza following Hamas-led attacks on Israeli communities on October 7, 2023.
The attacks resulted in the deaths of 1200 people and the abduction of over 250 hostages, according to Israeli reports.
Israel states that approximately 100 hostages are still being held, though it is unclear how many remain alive.
Gaza authorities report that Israel’s ongoing campaign has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians and displaced the majority of the 2.3 million residents.
Much of the territory has reportedly been devastated by the conflict.
Foreign
Biden signs bipartisan funding bill to keep government open
President Biden signed the stopgap funding bill that will keep the government open until March, punting the thornier issues surrounding the nation’s finances to the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump.
A bloated 1,500-page funding measure was exploded by Trump and his top ally Elon Musk earlier this week as they demanded a pared-down version.
The parties were able to cobble a stopgap bill together Friday evening, which passed the Senate early Saturday morning.
The package funds the government at current levels until March 14, 2025, and includes $100 billion in hurricane relief funds and $10 billion in aid to farmers.
With the stopgap funding only running until March, an almost certain clash is looming between Trump and GOP spending hardliners when Congress reconvenes in January.
“The bipartisan funding bill I just signed keeps the government open and delivers the urgently needed disaster relief that I requested for recovering communities as well as the funds needed to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge,” Biden said in a statement after inking the deal.
The post Biden signs bipartisan funding bill to keep government open appeared first on New York Post.
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