Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
06DAKAR1011
2006-04-26 18:39:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Dakar
Cable title:  

WADE'S ELECTORAL PROSPECTS UNSURE IN EAST AND SOUTH

Tags:  PGOV ECON SG 
pdf how-to read a cable
VZCZCXRO5695
PP RUEHPA
DE RUEHDK #1011/01 1161839
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 261839Z APR 06
FM AMEMBASSY DAKAR
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 4963
INFO RUEHZK/ECOWAS COLLECTIVE
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 DAKAR 001011 

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

STATE FOR AF/W, AF/RSA, DRL/PHD AND INR/AA

E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/26/2016
TAGS: PGOV ECON SG
SUBJECT: WADE'S ELECTORAL PROSPECTS UNSURE IN EAST AND SOUTH

REF: A. DAKAR 0817


B. DAKAR 0681

C. DAKAR 0565

Classified By: Political Counselor Roy L. Whitaker for reasons 1.4 (b)
and (d).

SUMMARY
-------
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 DAKAR 001011

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

STATE FOR AF/W, AF/RSA, DRL/PHD AND INR/AA

E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/26/2016
TAGS: PGOV ECON SG
SUBJECT: WADE'S ELECTORAL PROSPECTS UNSURE IN EAST AND SOUTH

REF: A. DAKAR 0817


B. DAKAR 0681

C. DAKAR 0565

Classified By: Political Counselor Roy L. Whitaker for reasons 1.4 (b)
and (d).

SUMMARY
--------------

1. (C) Ten months before presidential and parliamentary
elections, there is broad disenchantment with President Wade
in Senegal's East and South. Were the election held now, he
would likely lose in sparsely populated Tambacounda Region.
In Kolda and Ziguinchor, he needs to discipline his ruling
Democratic Party of Senegal (PDS); assure voters he is
working to mitigate southern isolation, and keep the
molasses-slow Casamance peace process from becoming an
electoral issue. The opposition, and above all Ziguinchor
Mayor Robert Sagna, appears strong in both East and South.
END SUMMARY.

TAMBACOUNDA: HUNTING CAMP AND TRUCK STOP
--------------

2. (SBU) Tambacounda Region covers a fifth of Senegal's land
area but has few people. A reporter told us the city was "a
hunting camp" until the 1970's, but it has grown as
northerners from the Senegal River Valley moved in to farm
grasslands or plant bananas in the southern hills. It now
lives from small-scale commerce of truck drivers on the
Bamako-Dakar run. Passenger and freight trains stop at its
sadly ramshackle station. The stationmaster, burrowed in a
tiny trackside depot, says they run "with some regularity,"
but his thrice-weekly claim differs from a guard's estimate
of twice. Schedules are haphazard: "It departs Wednesday or
sometimes Thursday." The station offers few local jobs; the
rail crew are mostly from the railway center in Thies.


3. (C) The local PDS is riven by at least six factions, with
some leaders weakened by former membership in the Socialist
Party (PS),origins in a non-local ethnic group, or
generational differences, etc. All fear that some factions
will forego voting for the PDS in favor of a "vote sanction,"
a purposeful abstention or even a spoiler vote for the
opposition. Local journalists tell us this has already
happened twice, resulting first in loss of the Regional
Council and then of the Municipal Council. As a result, Wade

has assigned national PDS organizer and Dakar Municipal
Council Chair Abdoulaye Faye to monitor the PDS in
Tambacounda.


4. (C) This decision, predictably, does not sit well with
the local PDS. Samba Diop, a PDS founder 30 years ago, is
loyal to Wade although he resents that Socialist Party (PS)
"transhumants" or turncoats were given jobs he wanted. He
says PDS reliance on transhumants left longtime militants
feeling "abandoned," which in turn undermines enthusiasm and
harms efforts to organize. Despite this, though, he
concludes that even after six years, PDS-inclined voters'
judgment of Wade is "not clear ... it's still settling in
people's minds." That may be, but beyond the generational
divide, PDS youth activist Hamadou Diallo calls his party
sclerotic, with two old guards, "ancient ones," and
newly-arrived transhumants, competing for power "from
comfortable parliamentary seats in Dakar," and frustrating
any chance for new PDS leaders to emerge.


5. (C) Thanks to the PDS' troubles, Tambacounda City and
Region are dominated by the PS, who, according to Deputy
Mayor Mountada Dabo, are energetically mobilizing voters. PS
strategy, he says, is to focus on strategic villages
identified as influential. Opposition organizers get their
message out by local means -- donkey wagons, bicycles or
"50cc Honda motorcycles bought with money from Tambacounda
emigrants." This renewed mobilization is targeting the
young, women and "village wisemen." Still, Dabo fears PDS
"intimidation, corruption and fraud," in the upcoming
elections. There were irregularities in the past, he says,
including substitution of voting bureaus' proces verbaux
(vote tallies). In 2002, he says, the organization then in
charge of vote monitoring had inadequate staff to cover the
Region, and he knows of one PDS organizer who simply took it
upon itself to pedal around several villages collecting vote
totals to deliver for authorities' compilation. The PS won
nevertheless and should again this time, Dabo believes, but
they would be stronger if they incorporated good-faith
challenges by internal dissidents, such as that of Ziguinchor
Mayor Sagna and his ally, Tambacounda's own mayor, Souty
Toure.

KOLDA: GUTTERS AND GUTTERSNIPES
--------------

DAKAR 00001011 002 OF 004



6. (C) Koldois are separated from most of Senegal by a
sovereign country and long bad roads, and, despite an
almost-completed impressive new highway linking Kolda to The
Gambia, they despair that Dakar pays them no heed and
overlooks their social and economic woes. They resent
Socialist ex-President Diouf's 1986 splitting of "Natural
Casamance" to isolate Casamance rebels in Ziguinchor. They
resent Wade for not keeping promises of large-scale
construction: "all Dakar has given us is a new town drainage
gutter and an overpriced mammoth of a mayoralty ... and Diouf
planned that!" They lament Ziguinchor's receipt of "massive
international aid while we receive none," and complain
bitterly that Kolda lacks a governor's office to demontrate
that it is an independent region. Finally, they blame Mayor
and Defense Minister Becaye Diop for failing to improve life.
They claim that despite a brand new albeit
yet-to-be-equipped hospital, the entire region has only eight
doctors and one gynecologist. They say poor roads keep crops
from markets, and that farmers' financial plight is so bad
"even burglars and roadside thieves aren't bothering to rob
them this year."


7. (C) Prime Minister Macky Sall visited last July and was
met with jeers and protest, red armbands. Moussa Diao, local
PDS Federation head, thinks Sall is "trying to work up the
courage to come back" and predicts any campaign structure
Sall tries to impose will be "an inoperational monster."
There are at least four PDS factions, including the Defense
Minister's, but PDS regional counselor Dia despairs at
Dakar's lack of attention: "It's as though we've worked 15
years for these people ... for nothing." To prove his point
that Wade favors transhumants over loyalists, he cites
numbers: 18 of 38 municipal counselors are transhumants, as
are 7 of 12 regional counselors and both Kolda
representatives on the Council of the Republic for Social and
Economic Affairs. Dia fears Wade will lose young Koldois,
and the PDS Convention des Jeunes' Abdoulaye Cisse blames PDS
MPs who "suffer from sleeping sickness." Cisse, pretending
not to have a favorite, notes that his club some years ago
named ex-Prime Minister and current presidential candidate
Idrissa Seck "Senegal's best mayor."


8. (C) Kolda's opposition thinks it can beat Wade and his
legislative candidates. Tidiane Ndiaye, Talla Sylla's local
organizer, sneers at huge pro-Wade rallies as "bush taxi
crowds" bused in for the occasion. The sophisticated
Socialist Alphousseyni Ba complains Wade is allowing a
"two-speed society where cities prosper while farmers
starve," and describes a distinction between factionalization
in the PS and PDS. In the PS, he argues, disputes did not
affect the functioning of the state, but in the PDS, factions
act out quarrels by undermining institutions run by rivals."
True or not, Ba wants to reverse Wade's strategy of
co-optation, and claims he has talked six PDS counselors
frustrated with their mayor into joining the opposition.

ZIGUINCHOR: WITH AN INCUMBENT MAYOR, SOCIALISTS HAVE EDGE
-------------- --------------

9. (C) 2007 will be the first election since the late 2003
start of the peace process. It is uncertain to what extent
potential voters will register, and how and where they will
do so. We do not know whether Casamancais will reward or
sanction Wade for his handling of negotiations with the rebel
movement. Nor is it clear whether public resentment of the
region's isolation from northern Senegal, and the lack of any
real economic development, will translate into an anti-Wade
vote.


10. (C) The greater Ziguinchor area has some 400,000
residents, which, if many voted, would give it real weight in
the national vote count. Yet it is unclear how many
potential voters will register and participate. Security in
former rebel areas, says Sud-FM reporter Ibrahima Gassama,
has become an election issue: registration commissions have
asked for a military escort, but rebels find this
unacceptable. Some voters, eager to receive identification
cards that go with voter registration, have come to the city
to register, but poor transportation facilities may limit the
numbers who do so.


11. (C) Infrastructure and transportation are major issues,
since Ziguinchor has gone through a particularly rough time
in recent months. Ferry service from Dakar has been
reestablished after a three-year hiatus, but the new boat,
the "Willis," is designed to allow only a few pounds of
freight to each passenger and is widely disdained.
Ziguinchorois have awaited renewed air service for months,
but as of our early April visit were frustrated by ongoing
delays. Temporary closure of the Gambian border in 2005 was
a severe blow, and road service through Tambacounda and
Kolda, no matter how much it pleased those two cities, did

DAKAR 00001011 003 OF 004


little to relieve Ziguinchor. Finally, there is resentment
that the only major road-building in the South links Kolda to
the Gambian border without a direct link to Ziguinchor. The
only reason for optimism we heard, in both Ziguinchor and
Kolda, was a recent visit by Indian engineers to explore
construction of a rail link to Tambacounda.


12. (C) The PDS in Ziguinchor has the usual factions pitting
a local deputy against a minister against the president of
the regional council ... we even identified a brand new youth
faction. In 2002, these factions applied a "vote sanction"
against rivals and allowed the PS' Robert Sagna to regain the
mayoralty and reestablish himself as a national political
power. Wade in turn "parachuted" a trusted adviser,
Secretary General at the Presidency Abdoulaye Balde, into

SIPDIS
Ziguinchor to knock heads (literally, in a late 2005 party
meeting) and discipline the party, but he has not yet
succeeded. We talked to two of his organizers, a Dr. Niakaly
and a second who would not give his name and whom we remember
fondly as the political commissar. Possibly because of
inexperience in dealing with foreigners, the two seemed
incapable of anything but fawning praise for Balde, and
whenever Niakaly seemed in danger of objectivity, the
commissar intervened to correct him.


13. (C) Oumar Lamine Badji, the Regional Council President
who helped create the local PDS, is known to be beside
himself with rage over Balde's presence, and barely
restrained himself in his talk with us. Balde, he
fulminated, is "not from here, doesn't speak the language,
and in any case lacks eloquence." Sharing Badji's contempt
for Balde, Magaye Gaye has set up a youth group, the Blue
Belts (after the PDS official color),to "tie down the PDS
discontents who would otherwise abandon us." PDS militants,
Gaye complained, "no longer recognize the PDS or the people
who lead it. If you take the time and trouble to build a
house, you don't turn it over to strangers."


14. (C) The local PS, thanks to Robert Sagna, may be as
strong as anywhere in the country. He has somehow managed to
create some local jobs, and even former enemies on the Left
vouch for him. Local Democratic League leader Mr. Badji said
Casamancais were distrustful of Dakar after 20 years of war,
and have fastened onto Sagna as a "son of the locality" with
ideas, contacts and energy to achieve something in the peace
process. Matar Diop of And Jef, despite his party's
national-level alliance with Wade, lamented that the "PDS
doesn't want to do anything for Ziguinchor, because they are
afraid Sagna will be seen as too successful as an opposition
mayor."


15. (C) Sagna, while challenging the leadership of the PS
with formation of his own "way of thinking," or faction, has
been widely reported to be exploring cooperation with Wade.
We asked Deputy Mayor and Sagna loyalist Yaya Mane about
this, and heard that Wade had proposed the vice-presidency to
Sagna. Sagna, said Mane, had agreed to accept the position,
but only if the PS as a whole, and not he as an individual,
were to enter government.


16. (C) A week later in Dakar, Sagna seemed to us not at all
in the mood for any deal with Wade. He lambasted Wade's
alleged lack of interest in peace negotiations and
unwillingness to pay attention to the Casamance until after
elections "unless large-scale violence forces him to." Sagna
criticized attacks on rebel recalcitrant Salif Sadio, whom he
saw as becoming increasingly flexible, and predicts the "no
war, no peace" impasse will continue. On politics, Sagna
sees ex-Prime Minister Seck as a factor only insofar as he
will split the PDS vote. He believes Wade is "miscalculating
if he thinks he can lose the countryside but win the cities
... because he is rapidly losing the urban youth vote." Wade
will "do anything" to win and will permit PDS violence. The
opposition, contrary to expectations, will have means to
counter this violence by using leftist and labor union
organizers and agitators. Perhaps reflecting his 20-year
experience in a militarized region, Sagna is concerned the
military will react to unrest, but he had no details to offer.

COMMENT
--------------

17. (C) Even after a fairly intensive examination of three
regional cities, we are uncertain that we have a clear idea
how eastern and southern voters are tending. While
Tambacounda and Kolda are both regional capitals, for
example, they do not necessarily reflect other major cities
in their region. Even more troubling as we attempt anything
like a prediction, is that we are never really comfortable
that our interlocutors truly understand the mind of the
peasant in remote areas. As the opposition provides us more
detail on mobilization of voters -- identification and use of

DAKAR 00001011 004 OF 004


strategic influential villages, the use of bicyles or mopeds
to get about, etc -- we are becoming somewhat surer of what
they tell us.


18. (C) Certainly PDS factionalization could be damaging to
Wade, or even more so to PDS parliamentary candidates. One
Socialist argued to us that PDS internecine rivalries are
acted out not only in personal enmities and casting of
spoiler votes, but also in attacks on governmental
institutions headed by rivals. Wade's best hope must be that
such bitterness marks only the early stages of the
pre-campaign, specifically the April period when the Prime
Minister and others attempt to reform local structures and
put their loyalists in power. There will, however, be
renewed struggles in November or December when parties choose
parliamentary candidates.


19. (C) Registration is proceeding painfully slowly
throughout the east and south, with inadequate mobile
registration boards for rural areas especially. Yet there
are signs that some voters are making an effort, despite bad
roads and spotty transportation, to go to cities to register.
Critics charge Wade is making registration easy in the
cities and hard in the countryside. Paradoxically, though,
in creating a kind of "motor-voter" system in which voters
register at the same time they receive useful and
highly-desired new identification cards, Wade and the PDS may
have created incentive for critics in rural areas to go out
of their way to sign up to vote. It seems increasingly clear
that the number of registered voters could significantly
exceed the 3 million originally expected to register by the
end of the official registration period at the end of May; in
fact, the number already exceeds 3 million. END COMMENT.


20. (U) Visit Embassy Dakar,s classified website at
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/af/dakar/.
JACOBS