Bathily was born in Tiyabu in Bakel Department. After serving as the Third Secretary of the Democratic League in charge of the press and external relations, he was elected as the party's Secretary-General at its First Congress on April 6–7, 1984, succeeding Babacar Sané. He was the LD/MPT's candidate in the February 1993 presidential election, taking fourth place with 2.41% of the vote. In the February 1993 parliamentary election, he was elected to the National Assembly; he then served as Minister for the Environment and the Protection of Nature from 1993 to 1998 under President Abdou Diouf. Bathily was re-elected to the National Assembly in the 1998 parliamentary election. He and the LD/MPT backed opposition candidate Abdoulaye Wade in the 2000 presidential election, and following Wade's victory Bathily was named Minister of Energy and Hydraulics in April 2000, remaining in that post until May 2001. He was again elected to the National Assembly of Senegal in the April 2001 parliamentary election from Bakel Department as a candidate of the ruling Sopi Coalition, and he became the Third Vice-President of the National Assembly. Subsequently the LD/MPT grew increasingly at odds with Wade, and Bathily led a vote in the National Assembly against an amnesty for individuals implicated in the 1993 killing of Constitutional Council Vice-President Babacar Sèye. Wade dismissed the LD/MPT ministers from the government in March 2005 and the party left the Sopi Coalition, going into opposition. Bathily ran again in the February 2007 presidential election as the candidate of the Jubbanti Sénégal coalition, taking sixth place with 2.21% of the vote, according to official results. Bathily's campaign rejected the results and alleged that there were flaws in the voting, saying that a person could be registered more than once, and that the ink used in voting, which was supposed to be indelible, could be washed off. Along with Socialist Party candidate Ousmane Tanor Dieng, Bathily filed an appeal regarding the election, but their appeals were rejected by the Constitutional Council. He was briefly detained by police in late January 2007, along with other opposition leaders, after participating in a banned protest regarding the delaying of parliamentary elections until June. After the formation of a government that included Wade's son Karim on May 1, 2009, Bathily denounced Wade for running the country through "family management", and he said that "Senegal beats all records in terms of bad governance. I am ashamed of my country." In addition, he criticized plans to introduce the office of Vice-President, saying that this office was unnecessary and senseless; he argued that it would merely be used by Wade "to ensure a monarchical succession". Bathily supported opposition candidate Macky Sall in the February–March 2012 presidential election. Sall won the election; a few months after taking office, he appointed Bathily as Minister of State at the Presidency on 1 August 2012. On 8 July 2013, the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced Bathily's appointment as his Deputy Special Representative in the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali. Less than a year later, on 30 April 2014, Ban Ki-moon announced Bathily's appointment as his Special Representative for Central Africa and Head of the United Nations Regional Office for Central Africa in Libreville, Gabon. Prior to an opposition protest in Libreville on 20 December 2014, Bathily called for dialogue, warning of the potential for "a deep crisis". In May 2015, Bathily presided over the Bangui National Forum, a national reconciliation conference organized by the transition government of the Central Africa Republic. The purpose of the Bangui National Forum was to bring together Central Africans from all regions and backgrounds to find lasting solutions to years of recurrent political instability in the country.
