Wade told to emulate Jammeh’s gov’t

The leader of Senegal’s Ecologist Party, Ali Aïdar, has call on President Abdoulaye Wade to learn from President Yahya Jammeh’s governance method.

Ali Aïdar was speaking over the weekend in Dakar following a demonstration against the skyrocketing prices in Senegal.

The Senegalese leader of "Les Verts" said he could not understand that "little Gambia did better than Senegal in reducing the price of basic commodities. "Abdoulaye Wade should go to The Gambia and meet President Jammeh. Then he should say, Mboka, I want you to explain to me how you manage to supply rice, sugar, petrol, electricity, and cooking oil to your Gambian people at a cheaper rate than I do for my people".

According to Mr Aïdar, Wade is the sole responsible of the hardship currently being experienced by the Senegalese people. "President Wade has failed the Senegalese people and he handles the affairs of the country the opposite way he promised to the electorate" Ali Aïdar said. He said that Wade’s advocated Great Offensive for Agriculture, Food and Abundance, GOANA, is another failure in the pipeline. According to Aïdar, "Wade can also learn a lot from Jammeh before launching his late food self sufficiency campaign" Ali Aïdar concluded.

Meanwhile, Wade’s recent call for Senegalese people to return to their land as one mean to counter the existing food crisis in rural areas of the country is being criticised by his opposition that argues that the programme is a late comer and irrelevant.

Maître Aïssata Tall Sall, spokeswoman for the former ruling PS party said "I'm sorry, I do not want to appear as Cassandra, but my own belief is that the Great offensive is more than a disillusion the President offers to the Senegalese people. I am convinced that this is a blue elephant that will join President Wade’s cemetery of projects since he took power in the year 2000. He launched his GOANA without ensuring that he had seeds, and it is only now that he realizes that these are the fundamentals of agriculture. What we propose to him is first and coherent vision of agricultural policy" Aminata Tall said.

She recalls the need to bring expertise to farmers. "It is only now that President Wade speaks about technically assisting farmers. They should be supported with supplies of seeds and fertilizer. When we were in business, there was a Senegalese Institute of Agricultural Research (ISRA). Today, this institute is bankrupt when it used to produce quality seeds for farmers. Agriculture is not a slogan, it is not theoretical, it is sweat and perseverance" Aminata Tall concluded.