Senegal-politics
Outgoing Senegalese team must not touch till: president-elect
DAKAR, March 24 (AFP) - Senegalese President-elect Abdoulaye Wade warned
civil servants and outgoing officials to keep their hands off national
assets
and finance ministry archives, in an interview published Friday.
He also asked ministers not to leave the country until his government
took
over.
Wade - whose inauguration is on April 1 - condemned chronic capital
flight
and asked the country's customs director to fight illegal financial
transfers,
the daily Wal Fadjri reported.
He also expressed the wish that ministers and directors of state
services
who manage national assets "do not leave the Senegalese territory pending
installation of the new government".
Wade slammed several state-run companies such as Dakar's port authority,
the national railways, and the state-run lottery, "which quickly signed
long
term contracts with suppliers in order to receive their commissions."
The practices "will not be tolerated," he declared, warning directors
"they
had better put their houses in order before passing control over to their
successors."
"I will be absolutely intransigent," he said.
Some archives, he said, "notably of certain state-run companies, the
treasury and services which depend on the finance ministry," had been
burned
in an attempt to destroy evidence of wrongdoing.
The justice department would be asked to investigate these cases, Wade
added.
In another interview with the daily Sud, he indicated that Senegalese
political leaders who had supported his campaign would be represented in
the
future government.
Former foreign minister and a dissident from the outgoing Socialist
Party,
Moustapha Niasse, will be named prime minister, Wade confirmed.
A coalition that supported Niasse for president would also be included
in
the government, the president-elect said.
Niasse told AFP Friday that one of his government's priorities will be
to
carry out an audit of the public finances.
The cabinet, which he said would be announced on April 3 or 4, "would
first
carry out an impartial, transparent, and objective audit of the state's
accounts in order to determine the exact financial and economic situation."
Wade also asked outgoing President Abdou Diouf, his long-standing rival
in
a political contest of and nine years his junior -- at 65 -- to represent
him
as envoy to the Europe-Africa summit in Cairo in April.
The incoming Senegalese president also won wide respect this week by
paying
a visit to his predecessor's 85-year-old mother in the northern town of
Louga.
Wade and Diouf touched Senegalese hearts Thursday when they embraced on
the
steps of the presidential palace as young supporters of the incoming leader
chanted his campaign slogan: "Sopi, sopi" (change).
kd/wai/nb
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