CHAD: VOICES OF THE RULING PARTY

UNCLAS NDJAMENA 000421

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR AF, AF/C, INR, DRL, DS/IP/AF, DS/IP/ITA;
LONDON AND PARIS FOR AFRICAWATCHERS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PHUM KDEM CD
SUBJECT: CHAD: VOICES OF THE RULING PARTY

REF: NDJAMENA 400


1. (SBU) Summary: The Secretary General of the ruling party
acknowledges rot in the party and an up-hill battle to
stimulate popular interest in the coming election. The
Governor of Kanem, a former rebel, dismisses the political
opposition as ineffective and looks toward an ill-defined
"politico-military" solution. An oppositionist allied with
ruling party notes that the government has perfected the art
of falsifying elections and thinks a rebel attack could make
the election interesting. Meanwhile, the opposition
coalition CPDC has officially announced its boycott of the
election. End Summary.

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THE PARTY MAN
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2. (SBU) Poloff called on Mahamat Hissene, Secretary General
of the MPS (Mouvement Patriotique du Salut),March 14 to get
the party perspective on the May 3 presidential election.
An "Arab" (i.e., member of ethnicity that speaks Arabic as
its native tongue) from the Batha Region (centered around Oum
Hadjer, Ati, and Yao) and former editor of the MPS newspaper
Le Progres, Mahamat Hissene just emerged from a heated
contest in the MPS third extraordinary congress with his
position surprisingly intact (reftel). He acknowledged that
the referendum last June that had altered the constitution to
allow President Deby to run for a third term had seen a "very
low turnout." He admitted that there was a prospect of a
repeat of that phenomenon in the coming election if the party
did not pull itself together.


3. (SBU) Mahamat Hissene said that he had given a tough
speech at the congress, blasting the party's complacency,
cronyism, and corruption. (Embassy has acquired a copy of
the speech and confirms that Mahamat Hissene was energetic in
its criticism of the party "militants" who had ceased being
militant and simply expected to be rewarded.) Mahamat
Hissene said that the easier days of the 1990's when Deby had
come to power and the party was new were long over. The MPS
was now tarred with the government for economic failure; such
was the price to be paid for being the dominant party. The
export of oil, he said, had increased popular expectations,
causing strikes and discontent in reaction to the
government's continued failure to pay salaries and pensions,
and nothing the government or the party had done had gone far
to tamp down these unrealistic expectations. In the
not-too-distant future when more roads were built, farm goods
began coming to market much faster, and people began to feel
some benefit to their own livelihoods, the pressure on the
government and party would begin to ease. He excused the
present contretemps with the World Bank on the ground that
the government was desperate for funds immediately, a need
that should, he said, have been understood by everyone. He
complained that one of his worst headaches, as party
executive officer, was sorting through ethnic complexities,
as he had to weigh the ethnic dimension carefully with every
appointment he made.


4. (SBU) Predictably, Mahamat Hissene was not forthcoming
when poloff, as politely as possible, suggested that changing
the constitution had not served the democratic need for
regular transition of power. He limply shifted blame to the
opposition, claiming that in the 1993 national conference it
was the opposition that had insisted on the term limit being
among the constitutional provisions that could be subject to
amendment (because, he said, they hoped to come to power
themselves some day). He acknowledged that lists of
registered voters were inadequate (as opposed to simply
fictive, as claimed by the opposition) but blamed this
shortcoming on the vastness and poverty of the country. The
present effort to improve the lists was focused in rural
areas that had previously simply been left out.

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FORMER REBEL, NOW GOVERNOR
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5. (SBU) Ahmadou Ahidjo, Governor of the Kanem Region (Mao
and Moussoro, northeast of Lake Chad),called on Ambassador
Wall March 14. A Southern military officer who defected in
the 1990's to join a rebel movement centered in the far North
and then was accepted back into the fold by Deby, Ahidjo
characterized the present political juncture in Chad as fluid
and unpredictable. Some of the pillars of the Zaghawa clique
that had run the country (into the ground) had gone into
rebellion and posed a significant threat from outside, just
at the time that Deby was putting himself up for reelection.
But none of the opposition figures who had any name
recognition, Ahidjo said, were in a position to capitalize on
Deby's present weakness. They commanded no significant
resources, had compromised themselves by working with the
government through the years, and refused to work together
effectively. Ahidjo was pointedly unkind in his description
of the leading Kanembou opposition figure, Lol Mahamat Choua,
saying Lol no longer had much following even in Kanem itself.
(He added, however, that the populace of Kanem Region was
now majority Gorane, i.e, far northern, as the Kanembou had
gradually been replaced by Gorane in their own territory.)


6. (SBU) Ahidjo claimed that the only way out of the present
impasse was, to use a favorite Chadian expression,
"politico-military." He did not elaborate nor suggest what
role he personally intended to play, but the implication was
a coup on the Turkish model.

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QUASI PARTY ALLY
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7. (SBU) To round out the picture further, poloff also
called on Dr. Delwa Kassire Koumakoye March 14. Kassire
comes from the Tandjile Region (Lai) in southern Chad and
heads the Vive-RNDP, a party that has been around for many
years, sometimes more in opposition, sometimes -- as at
present -- officially allied with the ruling party. Kassire
described his "alliance" with the MPS as being loose. It
allowed a couple of his colleagues to hold secretary-general
positions in two ministries, although he himself "would
never" serve in the government. He said he was "tempted" to
run against Deby in the coming election, since it was likely
that the rebels would make a push in the lead-up to the
election and, in the ensuing confusion, it might be the
moment for someone like himself to take advantage. However,
Kassire observed, the greater likelihood, as was the pattern
in Africa, was that someone brought to power through force of
arms would have to be removed and replaced through force of
arms. The issue was not one of popularity; the great
majority of the population, Kassire said, was dead-set
against Deby, although every region of the country had
different reasons (read, ethnic viewpoint) for being against
him.


8. (SBU) The problem was, Kassire said, that he was not sure
he commanded adequate resources to make a run. (Comment:
The dilapidated condition of his party headquarters, a
sweltering dust-blown shack whose walls were being chewed by
rats throughout the discussion, gave testimony to his party's
lack of resources. End Comment) e boasted of being
well-known and liked throughout the country, but
name-recognition, he said, was not enough. A particularly
expensive requirement was to be able to place observers at
the voting booths throughout the country. The government
found it difficult to get away with tampering with voting
results in the cities, but in the vast countryside, fraud was
rampant. Asked whether he had given consideration to joining
the opposition coalition CPDC, Kassire condemned all the
other oppostion leaders as selfish frauds.

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OFFICIAL BOYCOTT
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9. (SBU) On March 15 Salibou Garba, secretary of the
opposition coalition CPDC, stopped by the Embassy to drop off
a communique unanimously agreed upon March 14 by the members
of the CPDC, providing the coalition's staunch refusal to
participate in the May 3 election. He also passed a copy of
a letter from the CPDC to the Resident Representative of the
United Nations Development Program, to the same effect.
Garba said the CPDC was most unhappy with "all of the
international community" who, he said, appeared to have
"abandoned the people of Chad." He related what he had heard
about an abortive coup attempt overnight and asked how it was
possible to imagine going forward with an election under such
unsettled circumstances. To poloff's question whether the
CPDC meeting had decided on a specific plan for handling the
election, beyond boycott, Garba said he did not wish to
reveal any plan but it was certain that the parties in the
CPDC would do all in their power to ensure there was no
election. Asked about Kassire, Garba dismissed him as a
lying chameleon who would run if Deby gave him the money to
run.
WALL