President Bassirou Diomaye Faye took part this Sunday, alongside his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame, in the #CarFreeDay event, a bi-monthly initiative organized in Kigali to promote public health, environmental protection, and social cohesion through sports practice.
But beyond the ecological and community message, it was a sartorial detail that caught everyone’s attention: the attire of the Senegalese president. In the official images, we see Paul Kagame in jogging pants and sneakers, perfectly in the spirit of the sports day, while Diomaye Faye appears in a shirt and polished shoes. This sparked a wave of ironic and critical comments on social media.
“Find the mistake in the photo,” mocks Karim Ba. Others, like Marvin Saala Diouf, question the competence of the presidential communication team: “The context is sports, President Kagame in sports attire… Diomaye in a shirt. Supporting you is becoming tedious.” The same tone from Georges Coly: “Our President should not have worn a shirt. Those managing his protocol need to improve.” Julie Ndao adds, “Exactly, it’s a flaw.”
In the face of criticism, some internet users defend the head of state. “It wasn’t planned for him to go hiking, it was at the request of the Rwandan president,” corrects Abdou Mamour. Barka jokes, “Afterwards, the opponents will come and ask why he wasn’t wearing a jacket.” This seemingly trivial episode illustrates a recurrence in the mishaps of the presidential protocol, which has already been criticized several times since Diomaye Faye’s inauguration.