wa(de)faced

Popular frustration with President Wade continues to show up on his billboards.  I've seen others that I couldn't photograph at the time.  I've only one opponent's sign defaced so far.  The protests have continued peacefully but without as much attention.  Wade has predicted victory in the first round on February 26th, and a few people have said there will be violence afterwards if that's the case.  Others have said he can't win, but many fear a fair election is impossible.  

Politics again

On the day after Rick Santorum’s hat trick in the bible belt, it seems fitting to return Senegalese politics.  While I take great pleasure in the rare Republican inability to anoint a candidate, in their beautiful self-destruction this year, their more classically democratic public squabbling, a similar failure of the Senegalese opposition to unite behind a credible candidate has left some bloggers to conclude that Wade will win reelection, perhaps on the first ballot Feb. 26^th.  The campaign has officially started now, although that seems to just mean ramped up.  Large trucks loaded with massive speakers like this one troll the neighborhoods blasting music that if not compelling is at least attention getting.   Although I didn’t catch the show, this parade included 30 or 40 guys on rollerblades who were resting after some kind of performance I just missed. 

A new crop of billboards have sprung up overnight, and President Wade has a large number of them.  Again, the hand gestures, facial expressions, dress and slogans feel both similar and different from our own stripped down, stylized visual approach to visual candidate branding.  In these billboards, it’s hard not to start w/ the most disturbing one.  Wade’s face, which has a botoxed lack of expression, (at lunch today the WARC staff thought it was photoshopped) stares out with the joker’s rictus-like smile from the first Batman movie.  His hand gesture- is it beneficent?  Is it crying ‘halt’ as if to try and stop himself from running again?  But the Big Brother-like slogan, “He's the one who reassures” feels most creepy.  Senegal’s apparent inability to enforce the constitution, to stop a candidacy that seems eastern European in falseness, to unite behind a candidate or strategy to stop the juggernaut creates a deep sense of fatalism and cynicism in most people rather than reassurance suggested here.  And while Santorum is plenty creepy himself, Visiting the MN sweater vest factory is quite different from sacrificing 87 bulls, giving away 32 radios, and pouring out thousands of bottles of water as proscribed by some kind of spiritual advisor here.  I don’t know whether or not to believe this headline, but my students today assumed it was true.   

Tanor, the guy who’s arm gestures and expression I liked in the first round of posters has gotten a bit clichéd this round, claiming a return to ‘values’ and giving us all a reassuring thumb’s up.  That’s just more empty positivity than I can really stomach. 

Here, Mackey Sall, like Wade poses in alternating western and traditional dress, often is sequential billboards, seems stuffed into both outfits.  While American candidates clothes need to signal both power and the common touch, here this plays as both western and African, perhaps a larger span to bridge.  In both cases, however, his overripe physical quality suggests his widely known corruption, at least according to Pape. 

But the headlines on the newspapers clipped to strings along the VDN highway have settled into normal hysteria, one that suggests an acceptance of Wade’s third term, a relief over the end of violence and a fatalism over the ability of anything else to disrupt the power of an incumbent government that many believe will steal any vote that eventually occurs. 

More data points

I've just finished reading Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending.  While I'm still struggling with its larger provocations, I'm struck by the line, "History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation"(18).  As I try to construct and share some understanding of what's happening here, I appreciate how provisionally Barnes defines history.  Of course I'm attempting something closer to journalism than history, but it still feels ragged and incomplete.  Beyond the things I saw Friday and Saturday, I've read local papers, tracked tweets about Senegal, and read a few blogs and newspaper articles.  The papers here go beyond sensational and the partisan.  You need to read a half dozen of them and create a sort of Venn diagram of reality. I guess we all do that on the web most the time now anyway.    In that spirit, I offer a few additional, documentary notes about what's happening here.

Today, two people were killed by police 300 km north of here at a protest against the government.   I saw another burned out car on my run this morning and street cleaners  removing the ashes of burned tires in a nearby traffic circle.  The papers, radio and TV cover the situation constantly, and even when the reporters are speaking Wolof, I repeatedly hear the name of the president, the opposition groups, and the word 'manifestation' (protest).  Saturday night there was a power outage from late afternoon until midnight.  Everyone believes it was an intentional attempt to prevent people from hearing more news about the protests.  The papers noted that several websites that provided news about the conflict have been hacked or shut down.  Tomorrow,  the opposition groups M23 and Y En a Marre plan more protests.  The papers suggest they'll barricade streets and try to shut down the city.  I'm scheduled to meet with both Mamadou's and Pape's students to work with them, but it all depends.  I'm supposed to work on video introductions for the high school students to their American counterparts, but the first part of exchange scheduled for March will likely be put off by the unrest (I'm coming to dislike that word).  All plans now end with the phrase, 'In'shallah' as they say here- God willing.

While I walking in St. Louis Saturday, a man came up to me and asked if I was looking for a hotel. (Yes, it's that obvious).  And while I usually  ignore these approaches, I indulged this older man.  He told me he worked at a nearby hotel and would take me there.  I knew the point was a tip or a cut, and I thought I had already passed this hotel, but I was tired after looking at four different places.  We talked on the way, and he noted that President Wade had done 'lots of good things' and that he didn't understand why people were so upset.  The graffiti in St. Louis offered a different view of the election as well.  The countryside is more traditional, respects age and authority more, and is expected to vote for Wade.  When we got to the hotel, the girl seemed to challenge his role and then ignored him.  He appealed to me, asked if he hadn't brought me there, and forgot about the fact that he obviously didn't work there.  While I knew the expectations, his sudden shift to anger made me unsympathetic.  As I started moving up the stairs following the girl to look at the room, he grabbed my arm, became agitated, and said I wasn't "gentil".  I too ignored him and the attempted implicit obligation.  No doubt his politics also changed my earlier willingness to indulge him.  And while I didn't take that room either, I did come away with a glimpse of the way rural Senegal views the political upheaval of Dakar.  No doubt President Wade understands this, too.

Tinderbox

Dakar is oddly quiet today.  The newspapers pinned on a cord next to the highway caused a crowd to gather with their dire headlines.  CIEE advised its college students who arrived this week to get to know their host families and stay inside.  Everyone advised me to stay away from the protests this afternoon. The quiet roads suggest that many people are staying home and waiting.  Many people speak of a fear of violence.  Senegal seems at a new peak in its constitutional crisis.  The "5 Sages' as they're known ironically in the graffiti, five supreme court judges (who just happened to get huge raises last month) are expected to issue their decision today on President Wade's desire to run for an unconstitutional 3rd term.  He claims the constitution was reformed halfway into his first term, so it's really only a 2nd term on this version of the constitution.

Every person I've spoken with emphatically disagrees, and this banner tries a mathematical approach to tell him.   Although the judges have set no time to issue the decision, now people think they're going to wait until midnight to do so.

A coalition of opposition groups Y En a Marre (Enough Already) and M23 (A student group named for the June 23rd date the National Assembly denied the president's last attempt to change the constitution) planned a protest for today at the Place de l'Obelisk which was forbidden by the president.  They're still there now, with riot police massed just down the road.

Y En a Marre is known as an artists group and has made good use of Youtube videos and rap music to get their message out.  They seem to share some similarities with the Occupy Wall Street movement. 

This afternoon, a few thousand people of all ages gathered, with many more waiting and watching in the side roads around the park.  Despite the headlines and the police, loud music and and the large crowd created a party atmosphere.  Senegal 

enjoys free speech in addition to their free press, and the crowd  was exercising it today.

Groups supporting different presidential candidates wore t-shirts and posted banners.  The organizing groups wore t-shirts as well, and Y En a Marre people worked the park picking up trash while rap singers worked the crowd into some waving and chanting.  This poster suggests that Karim, the son of the president known bitterly and facetiously as the "Minister of the Earth and the Sky" because he's been given so much authority, should free his father. The shirt below takes the direct approach.

It's all politics here, too

And it's hard not to start with the headline in today's paper.  President Wade apparently offered the Senegalese national soccer team 20 million CFA ($60,000) each plus a house if they win the Africa Cup which is underway.  Like the wrong footed price increases on rice and cooking gas this week, Wade seems oblivious to the plight of the people in his country, and their rage just seems to grow.  Papi, the college student whose house I live in said, "That's our money!"  I don't imagine Wade will be releasing his tax returns, either.  Today's bus/taxi strike left the roads full of walkers, although there were some large buses and some illegal taxis running, too.  "Les Clandos," private cars used as clandestine taxis stepped up today, too.

Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be an opposition candidate with any particular momentum.  Of the 12 candidates running, three are former prime ministers who were pushed out.  Wade has had five prime ministers in ten years.  Only some of these candidates seem to be using posters, but all of them put their images on the posters.  Mustapha here, goes for substance with lots of text about a January conference and his party affiliation.  I'm less sure about the meaning of the white cloth.  I'm guessing in Senegal it's not surrender

Now Tanor seems to burst with enthusiasm and good will in this image.  He's also got the simplicity thing down and even the colors work for him.  This poster is green but others are blue.  He's got my vote, based on aesthetics. 

Now Gadio, however, is another story.  Is it the orange color?  the creepy smile?  That finger pointing straight into your chest while he talks to you, no, it's the gold bracelet, I think.  Why do I think his slogan "Liberate the Energy" might really mean "Liberate the Treasury"?    The only word I've heard in support of singer Youssou N'Dour is that he doesn't need any money and therefore shouldn't be corrupt.  That, at least, would be a nice change.