ASA Executive Board warns Ndiaye against defamation, declares Drame ‘legally’ elected President

The Executive Board of the Association des Sénégalais d’Amérique, ASA, Inc. (“ASA”) has described Serigne Mbake Ndiaye as imposter and warned him to desist from calling himself President-Elect of the organization.

This was disclosed in a letter sent on January 5, 2023 to Ndiaye by the association’s attorney, Kenneth F. McCallion.

“The Executive Board demands that you immediately cease and desist in publicly representing yourself as the “President-Elect” of the ASA or using the ASA name, logo, and goodwill for your private purposes,” the letter reads.

“The Executive Board further demands that you remove all existing statements and videos on social media where you refer to yourself as the “President-Elect” of the ASA or using the ASA name, logo, and goodwill for your private purposes. Since you were not validly elected Present of the ASA, you are not authorized to represent the ASA in any capacity,” Attorney McCallion added.

The Executive Board disclosed that Ndiaye’s candidacy was rejected because he failed to provide the Electoral Committee a valid criminal background check.

“As you are aware, your candidacy for President of the ASA in the election held on December 11, 2022 (the “2022 Election”) was invalidated due to your refusal and/or failure to provide a valid criminal background check as required by the ASA bylaws. The computer printout you provided from the website “Instant Checkmate” was correctly rejected by the ASA Electoral Committee as insufficient. Despite being provided 48 hours to provide a valid criminal background check, you instead re-submitted the “Instant Checkmate” printout. As a result of your failure to abide by the ASA bylaws, you were not a candidate in the 2022 Election. Any purported “election” carried out outside of the supervision of the ASA Electoral Committee is invalid,” the letter further reads.

“… the Executive Board demands that you cease and desist making false and defamatory statements about members of ASA, including El Hadji Gaye Ndour and Mamadou Drame, and issue a public retraction of the statements you made on the AC TV show on December 16, 2022. If you fail to abide by the foregoing demands, the ASA will have no option but to commence legal action against you seeking all available relief,” the attorney concluded.

Report gathered by our correspondent indicates that things are back to normalcy at ASA Headquarters in Harlem as the new inaugurated executives led by Mamadou Drame have taken full control of the day-to-day activities of the association.