OPPOSITION SEEMS BENT ON SELF-DESTRUCTION

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 DAKAR 002979 SIPDIS SIPDIS DEPT FOR AF/W, AF/RSA, DRL/AE AND INR/AA PARIS FOR POL - D'ELIA E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/18/2016 TAGS: PGOV PINS SOCI PINR KDEM SG SUBJECT: OPPOSITION SEEMS BENT ON SELF-DESTRUCTION REF: A. DAKAR 2940 ¶B. DAKAR 2271 ¶C. DAKAR 2001 ¶D. 05 DAKAR 2311 CLASSIFIED BY POLITICAL COUNSELOR ROY L. WHITAKER FOR REASONS 1.4 (B) AND (D). SUMMARY -------------- ¶1. (C) At lunchtime December 18, two opposition leaders told us by phone they are preparing to announce that the opposition will run multiple presidential candidates and two separate legislative lists. The Socialists may coalesce with ex-Prime Minister Idrissa Seck, who plans to return to Dakar today. Ambition, vanity and stubbornness over tactics have rent an opposition that had promised to restore "humility and coherence" to government. Meanwhile, the Government has shown its understanding of gerrymandering, and there is continued speculation about possible election violence. END SUMMARY A GOOD START ... -------------- ¶2. (C) Socialist Party (PS) leader Tanor Dieng and one-time Socialist Moustapha Niasse have been discussing a deal on election strategy for over a year (Ref D). To avoid friction, the two would agree on the need to reduce presidential power and enhance prime ministerial authority in a semi-parliamentary system. Niasse would take one of the jobs, Tanor the other. The question remained open, however, whether they would unite behind a single candidate for the first round or run separately and unite only for the second round after determining who was stronger. Throughout the year, the two worked with Abdoulaye Bathily, Amath Dansokho and others to strengthen the opposition's "Popular Coalition for an Alternative? (CPA). In October, the CPA issued a common program. Marked by compromise language but still somewhat daring, it proposed 77 measures for change, including a stronger prime minister and parliament, guarantees of separation of powers, bolstering the judicial branch and especially the constitutional court, greater transparency and general audit of state finances, etc. ¶3. (C) Serigne MBaye Thiam, the Socialists' drafter in the CPA, told us the program represented a conviction that Wade had undermined democratic institutions with his "party-state and personalized state." Thiam emphasized the pressing need for effective checks and balances, meaning a parliament with real powers and a constitutional court that would prevent the President from manipulating law and the constitution. The problem, Thiam lamented, was that opposition leaders still could not agree on either a candidate or an electoral strategy; a December 18 meeting would decide whether they would campaign together or separately THE SOCIALIST BREAK-APART CONTINUES -------------- ¶4. (C) Khalifa Sall, the inexhaustible and often irascible Socialist hard-liner, joined us December 12, battle weary from heated negotiations with would-be allies. Tanor Dieng, he said, faced two difficult and simultaneous challenges. First, his intra-party rival, Ziguinchor Mayor Robert Sagna, is running an independent presidential campaign, and Tanor would need to hold candidate selection caucuses in key cities to solidify his position as Socialist leader. Meanwhile, within the CPA, Niasse was "blackmailing" colleagues by demanding that he be the opposition's sole presidential candidate. ¶5. (C) Still managing to accentuate the positive, Sall argued that while "the CPA has a leadership problem in presidential elections, it has strategic choices in the parliamentary vote." Wade had miscalculated in raising the National Assembly's size from 120 to 150, Sall claimed, since that opened the way for the opposition to win up to 75 of 90 seats in 18 of the country's 30 administrative departments. Add to that seats allotted proportionally, and the CPA could dominate the Assembly. Even if Wade won re-election, the CPA could live quite well with cohabitation, seizing more legislative powers and letting Wade live "the easy life of head of state." ¶6. (C) Sall warned, though, that Wade had formed a "task force" to assure he would not lose, with son Karim, Prime Minister Macky Sall, Dakar Regional Council President Abdoulaye Faye, Agriculture Minister Farba Senghor, presidential chef de cabinet Pape Samba Diop and sometimes cabinet director Soulaymane Ndeme Ndiaye. They had formed two groups of young toughs. The first, "voltigeurs? (acrobats),would circulate on election day among voting stations to help Wade backers vote multiple times. If the vote appears to be going badly for Wade, then at about 5:00 PM other gangs will start disrupting the vote in key centers such as Dakar, Ziguinchor or Kaolack. To counter Wade's expected use of tricks and force, the CPA is organizing an "anti-fraud brigade" and, Sall added with just a hint of bluff, its own armed gangs. The problem's crux, he stressed, was that Wade's people will vote multiple times and the confused and incomplete electoral lists will allow them to. The only way to avert fraud and violence, he pleaded, is for the U.S. to convince the Interior Ministry to buy and use indelible ink to mark voters' hands. DAKAR 00002979 002 OF 003 AT A STRATEGIC IMPASSE -------------- ¶7. (C) Amath Dansokho, who engineered the strategy that made Wade president in 2000, broke away from the December 13 opposition coalition to lunch with us. A cell phone in one hand and fork in the other, betwixt instructions to allies and appeals to rivals, Dansokho and labor leader Ibrahima Sene admitted to us they were probably not going to achieve a unified CPA strategy. Others were blaming Moustapha Niasse, but the real spoiler was Abdoulaye Bathily, who insisted on running as president, though he could not win more than three percent of the vote, in order to enhance his influence in negotiating for the election second round. This was tragic given the nation's severe needs. "What Senegalais want above all," Dansokho argued, "was political and governmental coherence, but if the opposition does not offer it, they'll stick with Wade because they don't want any adventures." The way to provide this coherence is to start with the CPA's common program, but build upon it with a team ready to move into the presidency, premiership, and the chairs of both National Assembly and Council of the Republic. OUR FUTURE HAS NEVER BEEN SO UNREADABLE -------------- ¶8. (C) After the CPA deadlocked and adjourned ?till the weekend, Niasse's number two, Madienga Diouf, spent two hours with us without mentioning his boss's name a single time. Declaring that Senegal's economic, social and political situation had never been so "unreadable," he predicted there could be widespread abstention, violence, or, he hoped, a massive turnout to voice disappointment with Wade. There was, unfortunately, ongoing chaos in the electoral machinery. An unknown but significant percentage of voters had not received electoral cards, and many rural voters had registered but are not on voter lists. The Interior Ministry, further, "insists we base registration challenges on the basis of a definitive list of voters, when in fact the challenges are designed precisely to prepare that list." As for Socialists' calculation that they could win parliament and dominate government even if Wade won the presidency, Diouf scoffed: "Yeah, ok, but Wade will buy off the majority of the opposition deputies within a week, easy." REDISTRICTING: "OUNGK" IS THE WOLOF WORD FOR SALAMANDER -------------- -------------- ¶9. (C) Dansokho and Diouf both underlined that the decree establishing repartition of seats and allotting the number of deputies to be elected per constituency is just being publicized. Until the opposition has this basic information, they cannot complete selection of candidates for each district or submit a candidate list by December 28 as required by the electoral code. ¶10. (SBU) Even as we were meeting with Diouf on December 14, the government was releasing its decree, dated and signed December 8. The Socialists and Abdoulaye Bathily immediately announced they would ask the Conseil d'Etat (High Administrative Court) to nullify the decree. Bathily declared that Wade had "manifestly violated the Electoral Code. He is allotting parliamentary seats as a function of who is with him or who are his most irreducible adversaries," rather than by demographic criteria. As evidence, Bathily pointed out that his hometown, Bakel, was allotted one seat, while several smaller towns were being given two or three and the only slightly larger Saint Louis would have four. Where the PDS has several leaders competing for an Assembly seat, such as Linguere, the number of seats has been increased. Meanwhile, a drier-witted cynic commented that the last-minute and allegedly skewed repartition of seats was "a curious procedure by which to reaffirm our nation's unity." COMMENT -------------- ¶11. (C) As of December 18, after failing to agree on a coordinated electoral approach in two formal meetings, the opposition seem stymied. No one, through midday of the 18th, has been willing to accept the responsibility of declaring that agreement is impossible, though the press conference we hear may take place later in the day may clarify where each party stands. It appears there will be multiple opposition candidates in the election first round, and two parliamentary lists, one including Moustapha Niasse and Amath Dansokho, and the other the Socialists, Abdoulaye Bathily and possibly -- it has not yet been confirmed -- Idrissa Seck. A few claim this multiplicity of candidates will mobilize more voters. Most, though, think it will show voters how disorganized and rivalry-riven Wade's adversaries are, and make them ask, "if this is how they run elections, how can they run government?" ¶12. (C) While the opposition experiments with self-destruction, the Interior Ministry continues to do it no favors and has now engaged in what some familiar with American politics have called a Senegalese version of gerrymandering. Not having yet seen all figures for the new repartition of Assembly seats, we are unable to confirm that Wade has unfairly advantaged his ruling party. From the few numbers available to us so far, though, the repartition does seem to increase seats in areas where Wade is strong and where several ruling party rivals are competing to become deputies. DAKAR 00002979 003 OF 003 ¶13. (C) Socialist Khalifa Sall's warnings that Wade is preparing gangs to rig or disrupt elections should be taken seriously. Sall was a noted hardliner who opposed the turnover of power to Wade in 2000, and probably knows a dirty trick when he sees one. His assertion that the CPA is assembling gangs of toughs to confront ruling party gangs, though, may have an element of bluff. Wade as oppositionist was a skilled practitioner of the politics of the streets. The Socialists over 40 years in power were a party of clerks and bureaucrats, mostly unused to the really rough stuff, though if they add Seck, they will have another brawler of the Wade school. ¶14. (C) For what it is worth, during his December 18 meeting with the Ambassador, Minister of State and presidential candidate in his own right Landing Savane predicted that Wade will win a majority on February 25. END COMMENT. ¶15. (U) Visit Embassy Dakar's classified website at http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/af/dakar.