 Senegal has a new president, Basir-ud-Diyamai Fai, after the historic elections that were held on March 24th. Fai's victory is a strong rejection of the policies of incumbent President Maki Saleh, who tried to hold on to power by postponing these elections. Saleh's prime minister, Amadubah, who was Fai's main opponent, considered defeat after initially claiming that there was a possibility of a second round. This is no ordinary victory. Fai's promises and political background are quite unique, and he was backed by the vastly popular Osman Sonko, who had earlier been disqualified from contesting. There is a distinct anti-imperialist flavour to the politics of Sonko and Fai. It is important to remember that Maki Saleh was seen as a puppet of France, and many of his policies were wildly unpopular due to that reason. So what does Fai's victory mean? We go to Abdul to find out. Abdul, thank you so much for joining us. A very important election for the whole of the African continent actually, and a very decisive verdict towards maybe a new policy framework. But before getting to that, can you tell us the context in which the elections took place? There was a lot of controversy over whether these elections would even be conducted in the first place, and there was a lot of push and pull around that. So maybe could you give us a bit of context as to the situation in which the elections were held? Well Prashant, before the final announcement was made earlier this month, it was not very clear whether Senegal will see the elections this year or not, because if Maki Saleh, the president, was allowed to do his whatever he wanted to do, the election would have been postponed until December of this year. Of course, the constitutional councils did not agree with it, and finally pushed him to announce the date, and finally the elections happened. Of course, Maki Saleh was basically afraid of whatever he wanted to extend his term in power, the two terms limit in Senegal's polity. Of course, it seems that Maki Saleh did not find it sufficient enough to carry out his policies, whatever policy he had wished to implement, which of course were very unpopular. If you see, there were protests happening since 2021, at least if not before that, in popular protests where thousands of people marched all across the country demanding kind of removal of the government, demanding restoration of some kind of form of democracy, demanding the end of the corruption and the kind of system which Maki Saleh was identified with, the government led to try to repress the protests, which led to not only the arrest of hundreds of opposition activists, including the main opposition leader, Sonko, and his dissolution of his party, but also killing of around dozens of protesters, some estimates say around 60 of protesters. So the elections happened after there was a popular pressure and because the constitutional constant stood on its ground to kind of not to agree with Maki Saleh's proposal to extend the elections. Of course, there are other, as I said, the dysfunctional and oppressive government of Saleh was primarily responsible for the popular movement and which ultimately has led to the kind of result which we see now. Now, in this context, like you said, this election is a definite rejection of Maki Saleh's policies. You know, he desperately was, I think, also trying to extend this tenure so that someone from his side of the summer of his political side could win, but that hasn't happened. We have a new president whose political perspectives seem very different. So tell us a bit about this new president, his background, you know, and what kind of policies he's kind of promised or what are the ideas he's championed throughout the campaign? Well, Prashant, as we all know, Afairi is quite young and given that he was not the first choice to contest the election, Sonko was. And Sonko's policies, as I said before, were primarily opposed to the kind of policies which Maki Saleh is aligned with or is known for. And one of the major issues, of course, apart from the fact that there is an economic crisis in the country, there is massive unemployment and so on and so forth, which has kind of contributed to the rise of popular dissent against Maki Saleh's or his government and his policy. But there are also major structural problems which Afair has tried to address during his election campaign, of course, carrying forward the Sonko's political agenda, which is related to kind of bringing Senegal out of the colonial, you can say, fold kind of trying to, he has promised to reintroduce new currency, which will take Senegal out from the control of its economy by the French, in particular, French economy. So that is one major thing which Faye and his government, Faye has promised during the election campaign. Also, there is a strong focus on renegotiation on the gas and hydrocarbon production, which Senegal is going to have. Faye is saying that his government will, if he comes far, he will renegotiate those deals which Maki Saleh's government has signed with different countries. And most of these countries, Faye has an election campaign hints that basically leads to colonial exploitation of countries' natural resources. And so these are the two major promises which Faye had made during his election campaign, along with the new economic policies which are promised to kind of bring more employment, major relief from the bureaucratic structures which were created during last previous, you can say, two decades at least, if not since the decolonization of Senegal, and kind of fresh understanding of the economic issues. Apart from that, Faye has also promised a pan-Africanism. We do not yet know whether that pan-Africanism would be the pan-Africanism which Africa is known for post-decolonization, which several other leaders have promised in the past. But at least this is a talk which basically promises, which gives us some kind of promises about a kind of reorientation of Senegal's politics vis-à-vis its colonial past, vis-à-vis its orientation towards Africa, and of course vis-à-vis the policies which directly affect people on the in the day-to-day basis. Abdel, thank you so much for that update, but do stay back. We'll come back to you for the next story. Our next story is from West Asia, where Israel seems to be in no mood to listen to the UN Security Council resolution on a ceasefire. It has of course continued attacks on Gaza, but it has also launched strikes into southern Lebanon, which killed seven people. The Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah responded with rocket fire. There are also reports of Israeli attacks on Syria. We go back to Abdel for more details. Welcome back, Abdel. So once again Israel firing into Lebanon, you know, again human lives being lost and this kind of indicates that definitely no end to the warfare despite what the UN Security Council has called for. But could you take us through what has happened over the past 24 to 48 hours on that front? Well Prashant, ever since the United Nations Security Council adopted the resolution, it seems that there is an increase in Israel's aggression, not only towards Palestinians in Gaza, but also to the regional, to the larger region as a whole. If you see Lebanon was targeted at least a dozen of times since in last 24 hours by the Israeli both Air Force and the artillery and in which almost a dozen of people were killed, one of those attacks was carried out deep inside northern Israel, which is rare given since October 8 when Israel started bombing Lebanon. It has done that only a couple of times and this has been, as per the records, the deepest Israel has attacked since October 7, October 8 inside Lebanon. The attack in the Nabathia region was primarily against an emergency response center where the bandits and volunteers were basically working to provide relief to the people who were affected by the Israeli bombings and due to the war. And so, of course, this constitutes an attack on a civilian target, but one should not, by the way, there is also an extension of Israel's aggression in the region, as I said before, that these attacks were not limited only to Lebanon. There were attacks, there are reports of attacks coming from Syria as well. Inside Syria in the Dar al-Zur province, Israel was basically, Israel attacked at least 10 times as per the al-Maidin's report, which has killed around seven people, including some of them, of course, Syrian military personnel and more than a dozen Syrian civilians have also been wounded in these attacks. There is a confusion as if now whether US participated in those attacks or not. There are reports from Sana'a and al-Maidin which basically said that US was also part of those attacks, but US has denied officially that it did not participate in those attacks. In this context also, maybe could you take us through what is happening in the region as a whole, how has Lebanon been responding and also the fact that there have been massive protests across the region after the UN Security Council resolution? Well Prashant, ever since the resolution was passed, of course, the people in the region have been demonstrating against the war in Gaza and demanding not only a ceasefire but also breaking of relationship of their countries, respective countries with Israel. So for example, Jordan, which is now the center of the largest protests in the last few hours, at least for the last three days, sorry, the protests are ongoing, thousands of people have gathered in front of the Israeli embassy in Amman demanding that Israel implements the ceasefire resolution which was adopted by the UN Security Council. But they're also demanding, as I said before, that Jordan should break its diplomatic relationship with Israel. Of course, if we talk about the larger region, we know that the Ansarullah group in Yemen or the resistance groups in Iraq as Hezbollah in Lebanon have basically created a kind of axis of resistance and have been basically pressing through their attacks on the Israel-bound ships by the Ansarullah group in Red Sea or the resistance groups against the US presence inside the region. They have been basically trying to pressurize both the US and Israelis to basically stop the war in Gaza and kind of work on for a larger peace settlement. But so far, it has not happened. Finally, US seems to have kind of realized, it seems their actions, at least during the voting in the last resolution, hints that it has realized the importance of peace at this moment. But Israel does not seem to agree with it and it continues to carry out attacks. And in fact, increased has increased the attacks if we just talked about what happened in Lebanon, but also what is happening in Gaza at this moment. Thank you so much, Abdul for those updates. And that's all we have in today's daily debrief. We'll be back with a fresh episode tomorrow. In the meantime, do visit our website, peoplesdispatch.org, follow us on all the social media platforms. And if you're watching this on YouTube, please hit the subscribe button.