The Pape Diop problem (By Cheik Yérim Seck)

For this period of moderate sea where the ship PDS rocks, one of the close relations of commander keeps silent, plays the decay and gets ready. Pape Diop, because he  is the main conern, speaks little but has his people to speak for him. He does not act directly but uses second knives which put acts on his replacement.
 

While everybody considered him definitively fallen from his base of constitutional dolphin to  the benefit of a vice-president brought by a constitutional reform,  he is always in the position to self succeed the guide in case …At the hardest moments of the controversy to the parliament gathered in congress to examine the project of constitutional reform, he kept quiet. But his lieutenants manifestly known as Moussa Sy did the necessary to help the street  make the project of constitutional revision collapse. President of the Senate, the Upper House of the Parliament, constitutional dolphin of swears, treasurer of the ruling party, militant of the PDS since its creation, in 1974, president of the National Assembly from 2002 till 2007, mayor of Dakar from 2002 till 2009 … In spite of this exceptional career, Pape Diop is perceived in the presidential galaxy as being unfit of exercising the presidential office. None of the pretenders in the succession of the Head of State, Abdoulaye Wade, sees in him a competitor. Except may be Wade himself who, on the occasion of a meeting of the ruling authority of their party to the palace some weeks ago, threw to him: " I got up just for some minutes and you hurried to occupy my seat. You are too much pressed. " Between Abdoulaye Wade and Pape Diop, there is something psychological. whenever the first one, 85-year-old now, feels the slightest boredom of health, he gets angry against the second and  makes him feel it.
 

Very close to the president from 2004 till 2009, Pape Diop suddenly fell into disgrace after the local elections of March 22nd, 2009 which saw the ruling party losing all the big cities of the country. He was dethroned in the city hall of Dakar, and thus wasted the opportunity for Karim Wade, the son of the president, to succeed him at capital town hall to be made the hand before competing for the highest office. The Head of State does not forgive him up to now what he perceives as a sabotage deliberated on the election campaign orchestrated by the going out mayor who did not  have to give up his armchair. 

 

Abdoulaye Wade will try after the electoral collapse to liquidate Pape Diop as he proceeded with his former numbers two Idrissa Seck and Macky Sall. But the maraboutique family of Touba sets its veto to stop the machine to break which was set up little by little. Having made back round and quite taken without stumbling during several months, the survivor has crossed  the wave by making a success of a subtle dosage between the custom of his enormous financial means and the stake in action of his allies within the regime. He has many relays in the State and in the government (Madické Niang, Cheik Tidiane Sy, Samuel Sarr and Awa Ndiaye to quote only those) to sink. It is not rare that eminent government members leave the office of the president and give him report. The game is certainly worth the candle. Pape Diop is rich in billions and is generous with all his emotional circle.

 

Even to make bargains, it is necessary to be close to him. He is in the heart of all the juicy business under the era of the alternation. Mbackiyou Faye, who was attributed 29 hectares of lands in  Dakar in return of the financing of the cost of the construction of the Monument of the African revival, is one of his men liege. It is moreover him who he  delegated to serve of missi dominici between the Head of State and the labor unions of Sonatel to level the dispute resulting from the implementation of a device of taxation of the international calls entrants by Global Voice. Before moving himself  in Paris to go to try to convince the emigrants of the relevance of this device even if he increases the cost of their calls towards  the country. The stake is certainly considerable: it amounts in billion francs cfa a month not budgeted. Therefore, pape Diop is in all the knocks. He is, without doubt, one of the best businessmen of the politics  in Senegal.
 

The one who established in 1978 Soumbédioune Express ( Soumex), a company of export of halieutic products towards Europe, proclaims that he gained  money,travelled first-class and discovered the world before entering politics. He grew rich however never as well as during these years with Wade. The Sign of this vertiginous ascent, its real estate property known or hidden behind a SCI or screens persons gives the dizziness. Some samples are enough for illustrating its unlimitedness. He is the lodging-house keeper of the united Nations in a building situated behind the private hospital of  Mamelles, perched on a rock and overhanging the ocean, set up on a supposed site to shelter a hotel with all the facilitations which go with … Not far from there, on contrebas, an unfinished hotel foot in the water has just been acquired with several billions by Mbackiyou Faye. For whom? Opposite dash buildings in the Pharaonic architecture drawn by Pierre Goudiaby Atépa. It is the City Touba Almadies which has for master of work Touba Real Estate ( TRE) of the businessman Cheik Amar.Here the works in finish of these hundreds of villas takes place under the eye of one of  Pape Diop’s wives. Simple coincidence? Pure rumour? They are numerous the rumours which take the former  mayor for the real owner of the building of Almadies which sheltered up to recently the seat of Red Cross, and the one which overhangs the French Cultural center, in city center, and of many others and many others else.
 

Nothing predisposed this son of marabout stemming from a modest family of the center of senegal in such a prosperity. Born 57 years ago in Kaolack - And not in Mbour, as an installed confusion was able to remind it, he is only 4 years old when his father, Daouda Diop, dies. The harshness of the everyday life obliges her mother, Fatou Dièye, to entrust him to his aunt who lives  in Thiès. When she discovers that in ten past years her son was not registered at school, she asks to one of her cousins to find him papers so that he can join school. This cousin declares him erroneously under the first name "Pape" and not "Moustapha", his real first name. Very young orphan, raised by an aunt, registers on the school under a first name which is not his, Pape Diop has in his CV two lines which are disputed: The obtaining of a diploma of accounting in IUT(UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY) in 1976 and the recruitment as the state employee to the national Service of cooperation and assistance for the development ( Oncad) between 1976 and 1978.
 

 If his brief formation presents him in front the eyes of the graduates as being below the level required by the presidential function, Pape Diop cultivates his fields in Pout, sixty kilometers far from Dakar, spreads his tentacles and waits for his time. His survival is a daily challenge to Wade who "always killed" his  numbers two. The problem Pape Diop remains more than ever a puzzle for the regime.