"Dio," PR Diomaye, alias "Serigne Ngundu" by his nickname (as caustically revealed by his Prime Minister and no less former mentor and also new subordinate - what an equation with multiple confusions!), no longer really had a choice: with, on Friday, May 22, 2026, during the quarterly session of current affairs questions of the government at the National Assembly, the paroxysmal outbursts of Ousmane Sonko before the deputies, saying, among other things, that "the President made a mistake," and "that he will have to make up for it" and adding that he, Sonko, is not "a Prime Minister who blindly obeys" and who follows directives, President Diomaye had to face the glaringly obvious fact of the impossibility of continuing to manage by flying by sight - without a pilot in the plane - this very confusing institutional equation.

The final straw broke the camel's back: the cup was overflowing, after ten months of nerve-wracking warfare, where the only equation with multiple unknowns had long been: "Who will shoot first?" And so, if "whichever of the duo shoots first, will they lose the duel?"...

After this epilogue by dismissal which took place a little before 22pm GMT, Sonko, responding in a laconic Facebook post on Friday evening, May 22, 2026, with these words: "Thank God" ("Alhamdoulillah", in the text) and that he was going to "sleep with a light heart tonight" at home, in his own home in the Gorgui district (and not at the Petit Palais in the Dakar Plateau, the official residence of the PM, from which he had already moved his belongings several weeks ago): well, this suggests that Sonko will once again take Pastef with him into the opposition camp.

And Sonko's Facebook post had 241,000 likes and 57,000 comments by midnight on Friday, when I stopped counting. So there is indeed a "hard core," a "hawkish camp," and a "Pastef crowd" of Sonko's unconditional supporters.

But do they constitute the majority of the electors of the sovereign people? It is permissible to doubt this a little, even if we can recognize their strength in making more noise than the entire majority of the Senegalese people, a majority which we will call "silent", to use a pleonasm taken from Gustave Flaubert's "Dictionary of Received Ideas", and an expression dear to sociologists and political scientists of all democracies of the world, throughout history.

However, President Diomaye possesses several nuclear weapons and a bomb button that only he can press: thus, when he appoints his next Prime Minister (if the position is not abolished), the appointee will have four months to present their general policy statement to the National Assembly, and this Prime Minister will not be required to seek a vote of confidence from the members of the national parliamentary representation to approve or reject their general policy statement. This will take us to September 2026.

Then, until then, President Diomaye can pass his reform laws in the form of presidential decrees, without needing them to be voted on by the deputies.

Certainly, with 130 out of 165 seats, Pastef will be able to table one or more successive motions of no confidence against the future Prime Minister. But if the Prime Minister loses the vote, he and his government will be able to continue handling day-to-day affairs indefinitely, or at least until December 2026, when President Diomaye will be able to dissolve the National Assembly, the legally required two-year period for dissolution having then been reached.

Not to mention, in addition to the routine business handled by a censored government, the ever-present possibility of presidential decrees being issued instead of laws being passed.

In October 2026, with the single parliamentary session leading to the vote on the 2027 Budget, President Diomaye will be able to "roll out" until the end of December 2026, with a doubly alternative scenario: to renew the 2026 budget of Senegal alone for 2027 until the next early legislative elections to be held probably in March 2027, elections following which a supplementary finance law may be voted (or not!), by a reconfigured Senegalese National Assembly.

As for the immediate situation, the 130 Pastef deputies in Senegal's "untraceable" legislative chamber can, of course, propose laws and vote for them en masse: but they have no power to force President Diomaye to promulgate these laws, an essential step for these potential laws to have the force of law!

As early as April 2024, the worm was in the fruit and the tree always falls on the side it leans towards, as I said, as the archives of the Internet can attest, when I spoke on the airwaves of Africa Radio Paris in April 2024, immediately after the election of Bassirou Diomaye Diakhar Faye to the supreme magistracy: the appropriate and only suitable scheme should have been for Sonko to wait in a position as Minister of Presidential Affairs or Chief of Staff to the President, until the early legislative elections of November 2024 and then to go and sit as "PAN", President of the National Assembly, for the five-year term of the current mandate of President Diomaye.

And even remain PAN, in the event of a second term for Diomaye which would go until 2034. And only then, could Sonko have taken presidential power in a potential smooth succession transition without internal clashes within Pastef.

This scenario would not have been dishonorable in any way or would not have constituted too long a wait: because, in 2034, Sonko will be just 60 years old (God willing!), which is not too old to become head of state.

But Ousmane Sonko, the brawler, a fan of fighting as Jeune Afrique describes him, wanted to get his hands dirty as the self-proclaimed shield of the supposed Revolution that, in his eyes, is the regime in place since March 2024. He told Diomaye and boasted about it publicly: "Stay out of it, PR Diomaye, and let me beat them and fight them all!"

This is to forget that President Diomaye, who egotistically dared to give his first name to his development plan for the southern part of the country (the Diomaye Plan for Casamance), although he was the "default candidate" designated by Sonko for the presidential election of March 2024, had no desire to be and remain an "omni-absent, figurehead, wig and flowerpot President".

For the past ten months, President Diomaye and the now former Prime Minister Sonko have been holding each other hostage, waiting to see who will fire first. As the saying goes, "the first one to shoot is dead!" Tensions were even higher in recent days: President Diomaye had just decided that the Council of Ministers (which has met weekly since independence in 1960!) would now only be held every two weeks... To the very end, Sonko refused to compromise: well, the die is cast, and now he has to face the consequences. Because, yes, the only question left was: "Who will fire first?" President Diomaye finally fired the big cannonball right into the bullseye of the prime ministerial target, which had become as cumbersome, as embarrassing and so exponentially devastating to his authority as head of state, as an elephant from Niokolo-Koba in a shop of fine Japanese porcelain.

And President Diomaye chose his window of opportunity very well, on the eve of Tabaski week, the Feast of the Sheep, the biggest religious festival in Senegal, which alone has the power to empty the megacephalous Dakar of three-quarters of its inhabitants and which is a kind of political truce and professional break throughout the country for ten to fifteen days.

A political truce and a near-total pause in activities across the country will be put to good use at the highest levels of government. Simultaneously, with his National Dialogue launched on Thursday, May 21, 2026, in a new format—a 10-day session with political figures meeting one-on-one at the Presidential Palace (rather than the previous format of a massive, one-day gathering at the Abdou Diouf Conference Center in Diamniadio)—President Diomaye is quietly making his selections, testing his next prime ministerial candidates, and assessing his ministerial appointments. He will undoubtedly be looking at who he can poach from those segments of the Senegalese political class not yet committed to his cause, within a "Diomaye President Coalition," which is well on its way to merging all the political parties it comprises into a single, unified party in the coming months. Presidential party to counter and confront the Pastef "historical channel" version of Ousmane Sonko, which also has its coalition of parties, within the political grouping called APTE.

Ten days of National Political Dialogue inaugurated last Thursday, therefore, first with the reception of all the former Prime Ministers of Senegal.

In this regard, of all the living former Prime Ministers of Senegal, only President Idrissa Seck refused to go to the Presidential Palace on Avenue Léopold Sédar Senghor. We will return to this point, I will return to it, soon, regarding this refusal by "Mara" Idy, head of the Rewmi party, to comply with the summons issued by President Diomaye: for this is also a stance laden with meaning...

Speaking of meaning, and to "restore meaning to meaning," what's certain is that we could no longer afford the "lunar luxury"—which had been the case for the past ten months—of having the Pastef party simultaneously in charge of the country's affairs and government management, and also locked in a bitter standoff with a Siamese-Tracy Pastef that was also forming its own national political opposition. You said: "Pastef = Tass Fépp?" This situation could no longer continue.

We must quickly re-establish a clear organizational distinction between those who represent the Power and the Regime (who are only asked to manage the Senegalese pirogue well, without rocking it unnecessarily, nor steering it towards overly strong opposing currents (you mentioned: "IMF"?), nor digging holes in the hull of the pirogue: which is our fundamental right as citizens, voters, constituents, and a sovereign people) and, on the other side, those who are in "the opposition," radical or moderate opposition (whom we ask to work to convince us that they possess more promising political proposals than those of the current Power, opposition proposals to be validated or not in the upcoming elections: which is indeed also our most fundamental right as citizens, voters, and a sovereign people among whom we are relatives, elders, brothers, or sisters, rightfully concerned about the future of the next generation). Senegalese people who will be 25 years old in 2050.

Yes, ''Allah is great and Sonko is not small''. And so, without a doubt: yes, Sonko contributed very strongly to getting Diomaye elected as President of the Republic in March 2024, in a masterful campaign blitzkrieg (but also fraught with confusion-fusion of the two Pastef protagonists, with the future institutional risks we have seen), taking him from the "Prison" box to the "Presidency of the Republic" building, in just ten days.

However, at the end of the day, only two things matter.

Firstly, it was the sovereign people who voted (even if we, as Believers, must see the hand of Almighty God, who inspired this avalanche of "Diomaye ballots" slipped into the electoral urns of the planet "Mars 2024"...).

Secondly: no debt, whether material, financial, or moral (in this particular case), is eternal. No mandate is binding, be it that of members of parliament, and even less so that of the Head of State.

The only (social) body to which President Diomaye (who is an institutional and constitutional embodiment until the end of his term in 2029) is indebted and to whom he must be accountable at all times is the sovereign Senegalese people. Toward all other bodies (human or legal entities) considered individually, the President of the Republic has only a "duty of ingratitude."

Ousseynou Nar Gueye, Founder of Tract Hebdo (www.tract.sn),

Senior Partner at Axes et Cibles Com and

President of the citizen engagement movement "Option Nouvelles Générations"