"RENTREE POLITIQUE 2006:" ARROGANCE, CALCULATION,

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 DAKAR 002271 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/19/2016 TAGS: PGOV SOCI PINS PINR SG SUBJECT: "RENTREE POLITIQUE 2006:" ARROGANCE, CALCULATION, DESPAIR AND (JUST A LITTLE) HYSTERIA REF: A. DAKAR 2245 (NOTAL) ¶B. DAKAR 1427 (NOTAL) Classified By: Political Counselor Roy L. Whitaker for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d). SUMMARY -------------- ¶1. (C) Senegalese are returning from vacation to warnings that social equilibrium is in peril. President Wade's fiercest critics slander him in turn as a ruthless, scheming tyrant or vainglorious doddering relic. The opposition is wallowing in hapless self-pity, and the more histrionic among them predict crisis before the February 25 elections. Even as rumors of reviving the charges against former Prime Minister Idrissa Seck appear in the press, Jean-Paul Dias has been released, and his son has been transferred back to Dakar. Dakarois are irritated by energy blackouts, fuel shortages and the traffic mess around Wade's prestige construction projects. Urban youth seem either intellectually anaesthetized by hip hop or set to hitch a midnight pirogue to emigration in Spain. Coming as the peace process in the southern Casamance is breaking down, this is the gloomiest, most unsettled rentree politique in years. END SUMMARY. A TRULY BUMMER END OF SUMMER -------------- ¶2. (SBU) September is the month of slow return from summers in Europe or home villages, when the air and the rains are heavy, the rhythm of life is still easy and old friends or enemies exchange heartfelt or hypocritical best wishes for the coming year. This year, however, is different. Those who read the lively "Wal Fadjri" daily -- and everybody reads its headlines -- joined its editor in asking "But where is Senegal going?," and wonder if it is true that there is "a crisis of education, energy and justice ... the flower of industry is on its knees ... desperate youth flee our shores ... justice is turned upside down ... education is in turbulence ... and social equilibrium is in peril." Those who read the competing "Sud," similarly, learned quite simply that "the true Senegal is collapsing." THE MUSEUM PIECE PRESIDENT -------------- ¶3. (C) Over lunch, an odd couple of old friends who edit the prestige news/opinion journal "Nouvel Horizon," and the 20-cent street rag "Le Temoin" agreed that President Abdoulaye Wade and perhaps the entire political elite are on a collision course with a dissatisfied population. They believe Wade is increasingly incapable of governing effectively or even rationally, and fear his pride and desire to leave office with honor will not allow him either to drop out of the presidential race or accept a loss. ¶4. (C) One of our most judicious interlocutors, Wade's 2000-2004 Labor Minister Yero De, firmly believes Wade wishes only the best for his country. He fears, though, that Wade has shown as willingness to act illegally, as in manipulation of preparations for election. Even graver, De believes, Wade's ruling Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS) has "no real conception of what constitutes the state." Socialists in power occasionally "aggressed" the functioning of the state, but never for long or irreversibly. Wade, De argues, has so violated commonly accepted "rules of the game," that he risks his own legitimacy. Wade's personalization of power and weakening of government institutions, combined with managerial incompetence at a time of rising social demands threatens "destabilization of the entire political class and the system on which it is built." The octogenarian Wade's core problem, De adds, is that he has become blind to long-term consequences of his actions since, for him, "the future is now." De said an example is Wade's "unnecessary" recent authorization of military force in the Casamance. ¶5. (C) Landing Savane, the left's only remaining representative in Wade's government, has reaffirmed that he will run for president. His number two, Bassirou Sarr, asserted to us over lunch that Landing's candidacy is a kind of "insurance policy" for the ruling coalition, providing an alternative in case the aged and mercurial Wade dies in office, unexpectedly drops out of the presidential race, or fails to win a spot in the run-off. THE POKER PLAYER PRESIDENT -------------- ¶6. (C) In contrast to the image of Wade as senescent and myopic, his one-time biographer and current Justice Ministry senior civil servant Marcel Mendy, says the President is carefully calculating the balance of political forces before DAKAR 00002271 002 OF 003 deciding whether to go ahead with elections or postpone them for two years. Mendy (strictly protect) says Wade is leaving nothing to chance, adding that Wade predicts a very close election and therefore authorized the military to vote for the first time, and that Wade personally ordered the Interior Ministry to slow voter registration in opposition areas. Mendy says Wade and Senior Minister of Justice Cheikh Tidjane Sy are serious about bringing corruption charges of opposition leaders Tanor Dieng and Moustapha Niasse, and that Wade would not hesitate to arrest them even during the campaign. However, Wade did pardon and release Jean-Paul Dias, and son Barthelemy has been transferred back to Dakar from distant and hot Tambacounda. ¶7. (U) On September 14, the Council of Ministers approved Wade's draft law to increase the number of deputies from 120 to 140, giving Wade an opportunity to allocate more parliamentary seats where his party is strong. There are new rumors the Council is once again considering eliminating the second election round in favor of a "first-past-the-post" election which Wade true believers and opposition cynics agree he can win or rig easily. In recent weeks, Wade raised the forfeiture fees which parties must pony up to run for office. While this will have little effect on the leading opposition parties, it will probably discourage ruling coalition leaders from following Landing Savane's lead and running an independent presidential campaign. WADE'S CLEVEREST ENEMY -------------- ¶8. (C) The political elite agree that to win elections in 2007, Wade absolutely must co-opt, intimidate or otherwise neutralize former Prime Minister and declared presidential candidate Idrissa Seck. Wade and Sy are allegedly preparing to revive the embezzlement and illicit enrichment charges that kept Seck in jail from July 2005 until February 2006. The only disagreement is over how many in the ruling party will either vote for Seck (estimates range from five percent to a majority),or simply refrain from voting for Wade. Back from three weeks with Seck in Paris, Oumar Sarr tried to convince us with copious detail that the Interior Ministry has engaged a hit squad of non-Senegalese Africans to take Seck out. Sarr then said Seck would return to Senegal "by and possibly even before" the start of Ramadan September 24. Seck would campaign by showing his deep interest in the most voter-rich areas, for example by spending an uninterrupted week in Sarr's hometown and Mouride religious center Touba. Sarr said the opposition recognized Seck's considerable appeal, and claimed Socialist leader Tanor and Seck had "reached an understanding." Indeed, Sarr added, the only opposition leader still unwilling to join Seck was Moustapha Niasse. OH, WOE IS US! -------------- ¶9. (C) The opposition was showing some scrappiness a few months ago, but it seems to have lost its nerve during vacation. Socialist spokesman Elimane Kane and key organizer Gueorgui Cisse were hard-pressed to lay out for us even a strategy for an effective campaign, let alone electoral victory. They complained that Wade controls election mechanisms, uses national radio and television as part of his campaign apparatus, was jiggering the registration process in his favor, was holding the possibility of election postponement over their heads, knows how to keep his rivals off balance, and still controls gangs of young political hooligans. Tanor and Niasse, though, they argued, would not succumb to Wade's threats of arrest and prosecution. ¶10. (C) Independent Labor Party activist and labor leader Ibrahima Sene, was in an apocalyptic mood as he joined us for coffee. The donor community, he pleaded, must help Wade abandon the "unfair" new electoral rolls, relinquish his tight hold on national media, and stop arresting opposition leaders and other critics. If things go on as they are, he shook his head, "this country will fall apart, and the army will have to intervene, maybe even before the elections." GETTING AROUND, GETTING HIGH, GETTING OUT -------------- ¶11. (SBU) Senegalese are generally pretty laid-back for the first few weeks of the rentree, but this year people seem unusually irascible. Last May, Dakarois reacted with impressive patience to Wade's closure of yet another of the capital's primary roads for construction of a prestige project. Now, though, months of wear and tear and weeks of rain have worn away alternate side routes; commuters are coping daily with delay, mud, gravel, heavy trucks and bulldozers, and heavy-handed exercise of power by voluntary police charged with keeping traffic in order. To top it off, DAKAR 00002271 003.2 OF 003 the Government seized diesel fuel without advance notice or explanation, creating panic over gas supplies, long lines at filling stations, shortages, and renewed anger at ministries seemingly unable to provide electricity, garbage pick-up, smoothly functioning schools or other essential services. ¶12. (SBU) While the working class is complaining, there is a perception that urban youth are simply tuned out of politics. More seriously, there are signs that the urban poor are showing less and less commitment to the democratic system. A riot erupted over the governments failure to pick up the garbage in Colobane, resulting in both injuries and arrests. Hip hop is allegedly a culprit: although some singers have political messages, two urban sociologists told us most tunes reflect alienation or willingness to use violence. For those not into music, there is another form of escape: buying a seat on a nighttime fishing boat to the Canaries and the dream of work and security in Spain. CASAMANCE IN THE BACKGROUND -------------- ¶13. (SBU) Violence in the Casamance is an exception and an affront to the Senegalese sense that theirs is a consensual and non-confrontational society. While recent fighting, laying of mines and banditry in the city of Bignona may be distant, they create both self-doubt and criticism of the government's approach to reestablishing peace. Wade, people often said, was far better positioned than the Socialists to wage peace in the Casamance, but he has not succeeded in six years. Some question whether it was wise for Wade and the military to seek, so far unsuccessfully, to destroy recalcitrant rebels. COMMENT -------------- ¶14. (C) This cable depicts current social and political atmospherics in Dakar. The intensifying cynicism about Wade's style of governing may be even worse in parts of the countryside, but this hardly means all the criticism is true or even well-founded. The widely-respected Director General of Elections, Cheikh Gueye rejects the twin charges that Wade has undermined the state and is rigging electoral registration. Gueye told visiting Public Diplomacy speaker Sheldon Gellar emphatically that elections are being prepared by rofessionals who owe loyalty only to the state, an not to Wade or the ruling party. Similarly, chages that Wade's electoral maneuvers are illegal emain unproven. Our impression is that Wade strves both to show his formal respect for nationalinstitutions and to stay just within the boundares of the law, for example by seeking parliamentary approval of a political amnesty law or the eightmonth delay in parliamentary elections. ¶15. C) A real danger is that an unfortunate "conjunctue" or combination of events including energy shortages, problems at high schools and universities, evidence of corruption in the judiciary, deteriorating urban mobility in Dakar, gas lines, mismanagement in the public sector, and the exodus of young people to Spain, all set against the context of renewed violence in the Casamance, will raise questions about Wade's inability to provide either social services or stability. Doubts about his competence are increasingly joined by suspicions that he will hold onto power at all cost and rig the coming elections. Before long, some Senegalese argue, questions will be raised about his legitimacy as president and these, in turn, could mutate into challenges to the legitimacy of the democratic system. END COMMENT. JACOBS