QPOLITICS 2006: THE YEAR OF "ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN!"

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 DAKAR 000565



SIPDIS



SIPDIS



E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/06/11

TAGS: PGOV, PINR, SG

SUBJECT:QPOLITICS 2006: THE YEAR OF "ANYTHING CAN

HAPPEN!"



REF: A) DAKAR 0316; B) 05 DAKAR 2311



CLASSIFIED BY POLITICAL COUNSELOR ROY L. WHITAKER, FOR

REASONS 1.5 (B) AND (D).



SUMMARY

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1. (C) Senegalese predict "anything can happen" in the

run-up to parliamentary and presidential elections. Some

even believe the February 2007 election date may be reset

for constitutional, logistic or other reasons. President

Wade may establish a vice-presidency and Senate -- new

senior jobs to offer disgruntled loyalists or potential

allies. Neither Wade nor ex-PM Seck seem to have figured

out an advantageous way to resolve their dispute, and

Seck is hearing conflicting advice on whether to work

with Wade or challenge him. The opposition remains

fractured, leaderless and unimaginative. Some light-

heavyweight political and religious leaders want to

create a "third force." END SUMMARY.



THE POLITICS OF MALLEABLE INSTITUTIONS

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2. (C) Wade critics complain that he has "personalized

politics ... and places his own political interests above

republican institutions." Be that as it may, he does

like to keep opponents off-balance and his majority in

parliament enables him to do so. He called for

postponing National Assembly elections by a year to

coincide with scheduled 2007 presidential election. Yet,

as the president of the national election commission

(CENA) has told the Charge, Wade has not obtained

parliamentary approval to do so, leaving doubt about his

intentions. The most cynical Wade haters think that,

having persuaded people he has authority to extend

Parliament's mandate, Wade may seize any pretext that

arises (a national crisis of some sort, the financial

burden of an election, etc.) to extend his own.



3. (C) Feeding public suspicion is the sorry state of

preparations for the new electoral system. 2.4 million

potential voters have registered to date, with slightly

more women than men. The new deadline for registering is

May 31. While the CENA seems relatively optimistic,

opposition leaders predict it will soon be logistically

impossible to register all voters before the campaign.

There are complaints in the provinces of inadequate

staff, inefficient location of registration offices,

electricity brown-outs in peak hours, and an alleged

tendency to provide more facilities to pro-Wade areas.

If voters are not registered in time, critics fear, there

would be three bad options: proceed although the voters

rolls may not fairly represent all voters; revert to the

old electoral system with all the confusion that would

bring; or, postpone elections.



4. (C) We have heard speculation for months that Wade

would recreate a Senate to provide him senior-level

patronage jobs to parcel out, either to long-term PDS

loyalists or to opposition leaders willing to turn their

coats. A Vice-Presidency offers an even more tantalizing

set of options: Wade could name his VP and thereby

anoint a successor; he could break the opposition's back

by offering the job to its co-leader, Moustapha Niasse;

or he could even design it as a bucket-of-warm-spit

position with which to lure Seck's campaign support but

in which to exile Seck later. PM Macky Sall recently

pressed the Charge with questions about how the U.S.

vice-presidency and Senate are set up and function.



THE PRIME MINISTER'S STRAYING GOATS

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5. (C) Macky Sall declared February 26 in Matam that

the PDS is an enclosure of goats (un enclos de chevres),

and that you are either in the goat-pen or outside it.

Sall is traveling to provincial cities to work with PDS

local leaders on selecting parliamentary candidates. In

numerous instances, there is clearly a need to knock

heads and enforce discipline, but we are hearing that

Sall lacks the forcefulness or clout to do so

effectively. He has no real power to sanction the

uncooperative; Seck's sympathizers in the party resent

him; and unless and until the new Senate is created, he

has nothing to offer longtime Wade loyalists or ex-

Socialist turncoats and local clans who are competing for

the limited available spoils. Time and again, we hear

that only Wade keeps the PDS from disintegrating into

personality-centered and self-interested factions with

nothing in common save the search for power.



THE OPPOSITION'S FRENZIED TORPOR

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6. (C) The opposition lacks a leader to overcome its

lack of common goals or organizational inefficiency.

While loud and furious about Wade's alleged electoral

manipulations and contempt for republican institutions,

the opposition often appears immobile. Most believe Wade

will drop the current two-round election for a "first-

past-the-post" single round, for example, but each

opposition party, and a rebel Socialist faction, is

intent on running a candidate for president. The key

relationship in the opposition is between the Socialists

and Moustapha Niasse and there has been talk of one

becoming president and the other Prime Minister if they

win. Yet they have not shaken hands on the deal. Nor

have the ex-Marxist Democratic League and PIT been fully

integrated.



A THIRD FORCE

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7. (C) Two days after release from prison (Ref A),

Idrissa Seck had dinner with those who had visited him in

prison. In addition to the Lebanese-Senegalese ecologist

party leader Ali Haydar and former Wade confidant Jean

Paul Diaz, his guests were the young political activist

Talla Sylla and Serigne Mamoune Niasse, head of a small

political party and a leading marabout in the Kaolack

branch of the Tidjane Brotherhood. Sylla and Niasse

offered Seck similar advice.



8. (C) Sylla told us he urged Seck to challenge Wade

now for the presidency, and to circumvent the hapless

opposition's unappealing bosses with a new alliance.

Seck's de facto prime ministerial running mate would be

Mamadou Lamine Loum, who headed the last Socialist

government in 1998-2000 (Ref B). In the parliamentary

election, Sylla would head the new alliance's candidate

list.



9. (C) In a later conversation, Mamoune Niasse told us

he wants to form a "third pole" alternative to the PDS

and opposition. This new force would at first work as a

national mediator to "redress" the country's problems.

If this did not succeed, though, then the third force

would attempt to win the presidency and parliament.

Niasse's chief of protocol was earlier chief of protocol

to Prime Ministers Seck and Loum.



COMMENT

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10. (SBU) Wade's friends and hangers-on seem rather

amused that he has successfully created so much confusion

in the ranks of the opposition. His critics are

exasperated, though, and the Senegalese-in-the-street is

puzzled by what one professor and labor leader described

to us as "unprecedented political and institutional

uncertainty and instability."



11. (C) We cannot really judge if the current

incertitude is unprecedented, but we are intrigued by a

related argument. This is that politics in Senegal used

to be linear, with events proceeding in logical and

predictable patterns. Wade, however, has supposedly

changed the way politics works, with emphasis on personal

rather than institutional leadership; greater

identification of the ruling party with the state; and a

greater willingness to adapt rules, including electoral

law or the penal code, to exigencies identified or

defined by the President.



12. (C) As we have noted before, the President's April

4 Independence Day speech will give him the opportunity

to clarify the electoral calendar. He may even do so

before then. There will still be considerable political

flux, however, as internal PDS factions battle it out;

ex-PM Seck decides to challenge Wade, stay on the

sidelines or run for Parliament; the opposition sinks

deeper or emerges from its muddle; and young leaders

dissatisfied with both Wade and the opposition seek ways

to create a third political force.

Jackson