Macky Sall

President Macky Sall seems to have decided to open his privacy a little to the indiscretion of the cameras. After the video of his walk in the streets of Dakar with his daughter, social networks revealed him in a gleaming vintage car. A Mercedes Benz 200 from the 1968s. Images that reveal another facet of the politician.

Macky Sall is a Senegalese politician, born on December 11, 1961 in Fatick, a municipality of which he was the mayor, before resigning for incompatibility with the function of President of the Republic.

Prime Minister for three years from 2004 to 2007, he also held the position of President of the Senegalese National Assembly from 2007 to 2008.
Elected fourth President of the Republic of Senegal in the 2012 presidential election against Abdoulaye Wade, he took office on April 2, 2012.

Youth and training

In a family of four children, Macky Sall was raised in the Fatick region and then in the Fouta by his father, Amadou Abdoul Sall, toucouleur, a maneuver in the public service, then a caretaker, and his mother, Coumba Thimbo, also a peanut seller. While his father is a member of the Socialist Party (PS), Macky Sall attends the Maoists at Kaolack High School, through his brother-in-law, then enters during his studies at the faculty of Dakar, in the Marxist-Leninist movement, And-Jëf, with Landing Savané. He moved away quickly, not sharing the idea of the movement, nor Savané’s strategy to boycott the 1983 election against the PS, in which he voted for the liberal Abdoulaye Wade, as well as in 1988. He continues his training, and becomes a geologist engineer, a geophysicist trained at the Institute of Earth Sciences (IST) in Dakar, then at the École nationale supérieure du pétrole et des moteurs (ENSPM) of the Institut français du pétrole (IFP) in Paris. He is a member of several national and international associations of geologists and geophysicists.

Political beginnings alongside Abdoulaye Wade

A graduate, he joined Wade’s Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS) in the late 1980s, which identified him. In 1998, he has been Secretary General of the Fatick PDS Regional Convention since 1998 and president of the Initiatives and Strategies cell. He remains faithful to his leader, by becoming president of the party’s executives, and participating as such in the “Sopi” campaign of the 2000 Senegalese presidential election that brings Abdoulaye Wade to the head of the country. A close collaborator of the new president, he hopes to join the government, but from December 2000 to July 2001, became Director General of the Société des pétroles du Sénégal (PETROSEN), in which he held the position of Head of the Data Bank division for several years, and special advisor to the President of the Republic, in charge of Energy and Mines, from April 2000 to May 2001. From May 2001 to November 2002, he was Minister of Mines, Energy and Hydraulics. He replaces Professor Abdoulaye Bathily who will become Vice-President of the National Assembly. From November 2002 to August 2003, he was Minister of State, Minister of Mines, Energy and Hydraulics in the government led by Mame Madior Boye. From August 2003 to April 2004, he was Minister of State, Minister of the Interior and Local Authorities, spokesman for the government of Idrissa Seck. He will be replaced in this position by Ousmane Ngom. At the same time, he was appointed vice-chairman of the steering committee of the Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS) in April 2004.

Head of Government

Macky Sall was appointed Prime Minister on April 21, 2004. He held this position until June 19, 2007, holding the longevity record of Wade’s Prime Ministers. Little known, he won in his first general policy speech against the tenors of the opposition. Then, he implements the presidential projects put to sleep by Seck: highway, Dakar cornice, new airport… He leads the campaign for the re-election of Abdoulaye Wade in 2007, but sees his relations tense with the re-elected president.

President of the National Assembly

He is not reappointed to the primacy, replaced by Cheikh Hadjibou Soumaré. He fell back on the National Assembly, of which, the only candidate, he was elected president on June 20, 2007, by 143 votes out of 146 voters. But the break is consummated when he tries to summon Karim Wade, son of the President of the Republic, to the National Assembly for a hearing on the work of the ANOCI (National Agency of the Organization of the Islamic Conference). Faced with his refusal to resign from his duties, his position as number 2 of the PDS is abolished, the mandate of the President of the National Assembly is reduced from five to one year, and he is accused of money laundering, a file for which he obtains a dismissal.

Opposing Wade

Wounded in his pride, he emancipates himself instead of submitting to Wade1. On November 9, 2008, during a statement in Wolof and French, he announced that he would leave the Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS) and abandon all the positions he held thanks to this party. On December 1, 2008, he created, with about thirty executives of the PDS, the political party Alliance for the Republic (APR-Yaakaar) which, in the local elections of March 22, 2009, won all the localities of Fatick, his stronghold, the city of Gossas, twelve local authorities in the north of the country, three to the south. Also all the major cities in the country as part of a coalition formed with the other member parties of Bennoo Siggil Senegal. With the Senegalese presidential election of 2012 in focus, he crisscrosses the Senegalese countryside and meets the diaspora in the world’s major cities. In 2010, a poll for the presidential election placed him in the lead in Dakar and its region1. Introverted and not very charismatic, which earned him the nickname “Niangal Sall” (“Sall the severe”, in Wolof), he is recognized for integrity and competence. Polyglot (wolof, sérère, pulaar, French and English), he also embodies a generational renewal in Senegalese politics.

president

Candidate of the “Macky 2012” coalition, with the slogan “The path of true development”, he campaigns across the country without cutting with the opposition movement of June 23 (M23), which is content to demonstrate in Dakar in favor of invalidating Abdoulaye Wade’s candidacy for a third term. He came in second place in the first round, with 26.58% of the vote, compared to 34.81% for the outgoing president. In the in-between rounds, he brings together all the defeated candidates in the Benno Bokk Yakkar coalition (“United for the same hope”, in Wolof) and won the second round, on March 25, against the one who was his mentor, the latter calling him the same evening to congratulate him, before the official proclamation of the results by the Constitutional Council (with 65.80% of the votes, against 34.20% for the outgoing president). Fourth President of the Republic of Senegal, he was sworn in on April 2, 2012 at the King Fahd Palace-Soleil Hotel in Dakar. The next day, he appointed banker Abdoul Mbaye as Prime Minister who took the lead of a government limited to 25 members, and announced his desire to dissolve the National Assembly to organize legislative elections on July 17. Pending the July legislative elections, for which he managed to preserve the unity of the Benno Bokk Yakaar coalition, he multiplies symbolic gestures. Faithful to his promise to reduce the state’s lifestyle, he returns to certain ministerial privileges, abolishes 59 commissions and directorates deemed irrelevant including the National Agency of New Ports of Senegal, the Directorate of Small Aircraft Construction, the National Agency of the High Authority of the Desert, the Senegalese Office for Industrial Property and Technological Innovation duplicating with the Senegalese Agency for Property and Industrial and Technological Innovation, and announces audits on the management of its predecessor. He breaks several contracts within the presidential palace and limits the salaries of agency directors. He relaunches the Court for the Suppression of Illicit Enrichment and announces the creation of a National Anti-Corruption Office and a National Commission for the Return of Property and Recovery of Ill-Acquired Assets, while he cancels some of the latest decrees and contracts signed by Wade. To reduce the cost of living, the Abdoul Mbaye government announces the fall in the prices of oil, rice and sugar. Retirement pensions are revalued, farmers urgently subsidized in the face of the threat, the 29 permits granted by the previous government to foreign high-sea trawlers cancelled. To save the school year, national foundations on education are scheduled. In the field of foreign policy, he instructed Alioune Badara Cissé to renew traditional alliances (Morocco, Mauritania and The Gambia…) and to restore Senegal an important diplomatic role in Africa.