Just a day after its legal launching at Cices, Dakar, international trade fair, ‘Rewmi’ the party launched by Idrissa Seck, former senegalese prime-ministre, was under fire. The Senegalese government decided to banish it but its leader and supporters show determination to keep going.

Rewmi, meaning the country, in Wolof, the newly senegalese political party launched two weeks back by the former senegalese prime-minister Idrissa seck, has again to face the willingness of the Senegalese government to stop its leader to contest the 2007 senegalese presidential election. For Macky Sall, the actual senegalese chief of government, no one in senegal has the right to name is political party or association Rewmi, because this means the Country,and belongs to the senegalese nation as a whole. “It’s why,” he went on saying during a press conference held yesterday in his office in Dakar and surrounded by his entire cabinet, “I ordered the Interior minister not to recognise this political party”. Invoking section 57 of the Senegalese.

Constitution, especially its subsection 2 which confers prerogative to the prime-minister ‘’to ensure the execution of the laws and to have lawful capacity”, he then stated: “I want to inform the media about instructions I have already given to the Interior minister not to grant a receipt to a Political party which would be called Rewmi”. Shortly after M Macky Sall’s press briefing, Awa Gueye Kebé, a Senegalese former minister and deputy president of Rewmi, also invited the media to react with energy against what she described as the violation of the enegalese Constitution, and an attempt to intimidate and to stop Idrissa seck contesting the presidential election.

About the decree of Senegal’s prime-minister banishing Rewmi from the Senegalese political arena, she considered it politically motivated,and in contravention of the Constitution. According to her, Rewmi is a legal political party which is created in conformity with the Constitution. “The law does not prohibit at all a Senegalese or a group of Senegalese to create a political party called Rewmi.

That is included nowhere in the Constitution “, she stressed. “Besides, she insisted, we did everything according to the law and we deposited, in accordance with its provisions, a declaration to the ministry of Interior to announce the change occurred within Fpj, a legal political party who changed its name to Rewmi, informing him about the change which occured for days in our party, such as changes of party leaders, the new emblem, party colors, and motto”.

Considering the change occurred in the former Fpj, a party led by Isa Sankhare, a counselor to president Wade who decided to join Idrissa Seck, Awa gueye kebé emphasized that : “the law constrained us not to request a receipt , as a party it already recognized, but rather to make a statement informing the ministry of Interior on the change that had occurred; and I think that if the government is law abiding, nothing like banishing Rewmi can be decided, because it sounds unlawful and arbitrary and we are really ready to face the governement attitude’’ with whatever means, Rewmi is ready to fight vis-a-vis with the reign of arbitrary laws.

This battle between a divided clan, PDS, leading party, has caused emotions in the media in Senegal. In almost its generality, the Senegalese media have condemned the Senegalese government decision which constitutes using the state to settle political matters, ‘’ when senegalese people are facing difficult moments as the economic crisis which has reached a critical level, with young people braving the sea to go to Spain, and the social situation which is going from bad to worse’’, noted le Quotidien, a Senegalese Daily. It could be recalled that the Senegalese presidential election will take place on 27 February 2007, and the political warm-up is raging in Dakar, the Senegalese capital, and Mr Wade, Senegalese’s president, is actually facing intensive criticisms about his deal with Spain for repatriation of thousands of Senegalese migrants who reached Spain by sea.