CHAD: LAST-DITCH UN EFFORT ON ELECTIONS FAILS

UNCLAS NDJAMENA 000453

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: LAST-DITCH UN EFFORT ON ELECTIONS FAILS



1. (SBU) Summary: Midnight March 24, the deadline for
candidates to announce themselves for the May 3 presidential
election, passed with only five candidates being announced:
President Deby and four of his allies. The significant
political opposition held fast to its boycott, despite
reported inducements from Deby. UNDP Resrep brokered a
last-ditch attempt to break the boycott and get the
government to make concessions on electoral reform. It was a
total failure. The opposition coalition CPDC on March 25
called on its supporters to use every means to ensure that
the election not take place. End Summary.

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The Desperate Effort
--------------


2. (SBU) Kingsley Amaning, Resident Coordinator of the UN
System (Ghana),called on Ambassador Wall March 23 to review
his frantic efforts over the preceding weeks to preserve a
democratic figleaf for the May 3 election. He had met key
ministers including the Minister of Territorial
Administration, the Secretary General of the ruling party
MPS, French Ambassador Bercot, and key opposition figures,
with the objective of having the government commit to
electoral reform and the opposition participate in the
election. The deadline for his efforts was midnight on the
next day, since that was the official cut-off for
announcement of presidential candidacies. Amaning regretted
that the coup plot of March 14, the battle in the East March
20, and the panic in the streets on March 22 had combined to
make his endeavor even more difficult. However, he continued
to believe it was necessary for him to make the effort, since
even at so late an hour and under such straitened
circumstances it was theoretically possible to take concrete
steps to help the May 3 election and thereby set in motion a
process that could improve the ensuing communal and
legislative elections.


3. (SBU) Amaning said that the Secretary General's special
representative in the region, General Lamine Cisse (Senegal),
was arriving later that day in Ndjamena and would preside
over a government-opposition meeting the next day, if it
could be scheduled. Amaning said he would try to see the
Prime Minister, expected to get the latter's approval for and
participation in the meeting, believed that leading maverick
oppositionist Yorongar would attend, and hoped that the other
leading oppositionists, grouped in the coalition CPDC, might
also attend. However, he was not optimistic about the
results, even if the meeting were to occur. The government
was unwilling to commit to significant reforms. Yorongar was
becoming more determined rather than less so. The leaders in
the CPDC said there was no way to salvage the election as
constituted. Meanwhile, Salibou Garba of the CPDC had told
Amaning that the government had approached several members of
the CPDC to try to buy them off. French Ambassador
Jean-Pierre Bercot had told Amaning that CPDC leaders
Kamougue and Kebzabo would be bought off by Deby and would
announce their candidacy. For Amaning, the worst result,
worse than boycott, would be a fraudulent election with some
of the most prominent oppositionists paid to participate.

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The Pitiful Meeting
--------------


4. (SBU) Amaning informed the French and American
Ambassadors and German and EU Charges March 24 that the
meeting would take place under the aegis of the Prime
Minister but without the CPDC. He convoked the diplomats for
a pre-meeting, to introduce General Cisse. Cisse told the
diplomats that Secretary General Annan had asked him to come
to Chad to do whatever could be done to save the electoral
process. Cisse said he was focused on the most fragile state
in the region, Central African Republic, but he was following
Chad and had attended the Chad-Sudan reconciliation meeting
in Tripoli in February. French Ambassador Bercot spoke at
some length. The political process in Chad, according to
Bercot, was totally blocked. The abyss between the President
and opposition was growing wider and deeper. It was too late
now to do anything to help the presidential election, but it
was important for the international community to do something
about the legislative elections next year. It was time,
Bercot continued, for the people of southern Chad to retake
the leadership of the country, but Southern oppositionists
had wasted time competing among themselves and, now that
there was a rift among the Zaghawa ruling clan, the
opposition leaders were foolishly emboldened to greater
stubbornness. Bercot emphasized the low quality of the
opposition parties, noting, in particular, their inability to
send observers to voting booths outside their own ethnic
areas. He said it was necessary to avoid a power vacuum,
whether by force of arms or constitutional void, as such a
vacuum would present France and the international community
with uncontrollable instability in Chad.


5. (SBU) The following two-and-a-half hour meeting took
place at a long table at the Foreign Ministry. Prime
Minister Pascal Yoadimnadji sat at one end with General
Cisse, Amaning, a gaggle of ministers, and the diplomats,
while half the seats at the other end were empty (for the
CPDC) and half were occupied by Ngarlejy Yorongar and members
of his party (FAR). The ensuing slanging match between two
Southerners, the Prime Minister from Doba and Yorongar from
Bebedjia (20 miles away from Doba in the heart of the
oil-producing zone),was an irony lost on no one.


6. (SBU) Cisse opened with congratulations for the
government and opposition on this beginning of a dialogue,
observing that the simple fact of the physical presence of
government and opposition around a table was half the battle.
Prime Minister Yoadimnadji opened, inauspiciously, with
regrets at the absence of the CPDC and his appraisal that
there was little room for maneuver in regard to the May 3
election. He said that the government had always been open
to discussion with the opposition, this discussion was very
late in the day, but any discussion was better late than
never. Yorongar opened still less auspiciously, with a
lengthy historical review of the government's manipulation of
the presidential and legislative elections of 1996, 1997,
2001, 2002, and the referendum of 2005. Yorongar said that
the CPDC's absence was, in part, due to the government's
last-minute refusal to allow it to proceed with a mass rally
the following day. He said that the opposition had
repeatedly asked the President for a national dialogue and
had repeatedly presented to the President the minimum
requirements for ensuring that future elections would not be
defrauded. Yoadimnadji, irritated, responded that his
government had twice asked to meet the opposition and
received no response. He said that the opposition's claims
of having the "true statistics" of past elections were not to
be credited, since none of the opposition parties had the
capability to put observers in any but a fraction of voting
booths nationwide. He said there was no point continuing the
meeting if Yorongar's purpose was hurling insults rather than
making concrete and realistic proposals.


7. (SBU) Yorongar said he was happy to present yet again the
concrete proposals that he and other members of the
opposition had repeatedly put forward as essential to
cleansing the electoral process. He went through them: a
new electoral commission with 50-percent representation from
the opposition and with representatives of the international
community as observers; a new census to register voters; a
single, nonfalsifiable attestation of results at every voting
booth, rather than two documents (one signed by officials and
observers, another not signed but used as the official
result); a single ballot; voting by nomads only on a single
day, not four days as now permitted; suppression of voting by
Chadians abroad (especially in Sudan where fraud had been
rampant); a reconstituted constitutional court, with
international observers; rapid and free radio promulgation of
voting results; and ensuring the cell phone network remained
open on election day. (Note: A UN report released in
November agreed with most of these recommendations,
concluding in particular that the national institutions
responsible for managing elections lacked independence and
that the most recent electoral census was not credible. End
Note.) Yorongar added that it was necessary to delay the
presidential election by at least 3-6 months to effect the
necessary changes.


8. (SBU) Yoadimnadji said, in response, that he did not see
anything realistic in Yorongar's proposals. He read from the
law covering the electoral commission, claiming that it
ensured an equitable balance between ruling party,
opposition, and independent members. He claimed that the two
voting documents always contained the same information, one
being merely a summary of the other. He said that the
opposition was asking the government to tamper with laws at
the eleventh hour, but the government could not accept a
juridical void, nor were laws to be lightly altered. Cisse
and Amaning urged the prime minister and Yorongar to look for
areas where modifications might be possible without touching
the constitution -- Cisse noting in particular the voting
documents as one vital step in the electoral process that
could be fixed without requiring legal modifications, Amaning
noting that elections could be organized so that voting
nationwide could be more closely and systematically observed.
Yoadimnadji responded that he did not see any such
possibilities. The voting documents were prescribed by law.
As for observers at booths, it was not for the government or
ruling party to try to hire observers for the opposition
parties, if they were too ineffective to produce their own.
Yorongar commented that the government had never had a
problem changing laws whenever it suited it. As for the
lateness of the hour for dialogue, Yorongar said he had
delivered his points to the President already in 2000 and
again in 2003, and the CPDC had made similar points in a
meeting with the President in September 2005. To none of
these overtures had the President made a response.
Yoadimnadji said it was essential to make reasonable
propositions and in a timely fashion, nor could the
opposition insist on seeing the President. Yorongar said
that it was essential to see, and have a response directly
from, the President. Yoadimnadji concluded the meeting with

the observation that the opposition in Chad unfortunately
seemed to like boycotts but that boycotts were not the
correct way to proceed in a democracy.

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And There Were Only Four
--------------


9. (SBU) The midnight hour passed and March 25 dawned
without Yorongar or any of the CPDC members (not even the
least significant and most impecunious of the twenty-odd
members of the CPDC) announcing for the May 3 election.
Salibou Garba told us March 25 that he had been personally
approached by Daoussa, Deby's older half-brother, with the
offer of a "suitcase" full of money to put his name in as a
candidate, and a similar approach had been made to Kamougue,
Kebzabo, and Lol Mahamat Choua, as well as to a number of
lesser oppositionists. Kamougue and Kebzabo had both made
themselves scarce (Kamougue in the South, Kebzabo in Mali) --
whether to get away from advances from the regime or whether
to distance themselves from the CPDC, or both, was not clear
at this juncture to Salibou.


10. (SBU) The four candidates, in addition to Deby, who
announced themselves before the deadline were:

-- Delwa Kassire Coumakoye, the only one of the four with a
signficant following. His party (Vive-RNDP) is officially
allied with the MPS and has two minister-level members in the
government and five members of parliament. Opportunistic and
bombastic, Kassire was prime minister during the period
1993-95, just before the constitution was put in place and
the first presidential election held.

-- Albert Pahimi Padacke, a serving minister (Agriculture).
Follower of Kassire until 1996 when he broke off and formed
his own party (RNDT),with one member of parliament. He has
proved useful to the ruling MPS, drawing off some voters in
the Mayo Kebbi region from Saleh Kebzabo.

-- Mahamat Abdoulaye, a serving deputy minister
(Decentralization). His party (MPDT) has one member of
parliament. He was a presidential candidate in 1996, placing
eleventh among fifteen candidates, and has since held several
ministerial posts.

-- Brahim Koulamallah, from a well-known Ndjamena family but
not a significant political figure himself. Son of Ahmed
Koulamallah, a powerful political figure during the period
leading up to independence and prime minister in 1959.
Ahmed's sons Brahim and Abderahman each have tiny political
parties of their own with no representation in parliament.

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Use Every Means to Obstruct the Election
--------------


11. (SBU) The government changed its mind and the CPDC went
ahead with its mass rally in Ndjamena March 25 at the largest
hall in the country, Palais de 15 Janvier. According to
Salibou Garba, the hall was packed. Saleh Kebzabo was due to
give the principal address, but in his absence, Lol Mahamat
Choua delivered it. Most notable was its call for active
obstruction of the May 3 election. Key portions of the
speech:

-- "To obtain the participation of the political parties who
are members of the CPDC in this election, good sense requires
the suspension of the process, dissolution of the organs put
in place.... Discussion must take place among the actors ith
parity of representation and not in the mids of
confusion.... (Specifically):

-- -- Complete redoing of the electoral census by credible
istitutions, to create a secure document (of votingresults);
-- -- Redefinition of a new organ for anaging elections with
parity of representation,a new electoral commission with
prerogatives that take into account actual experience;
-- -- Cleaning up of the electoral code to guarantee equality
among candidates and better to ensure that citizens' votes
are recorded;
-- -- Putting in place proper mechanisms in the electoral
code, particularly to ensure control and sanctions.

-- In the absence of such a debate leading to consensual
solutions, no one can constrain us to participate in a
pretense of an election, not even the Ambassador of the
French Republic.

-- For some time, the Ambassador of France, who has
distinguished himself since his arrival by his contempt for
the democratic opposition, his systematic denigration of the
independent civil society, and by the diabolization of the
press not allied to the regime, has been extremely active in
dragging the European Union and the entire international
community into the flagrant and grotesque support he gives
the dying regime of President Deby.....

-- We solemnly request the French government and people,
President Jacques Chirac in particular, whom I have had the
pleasure and honor of knowing personally, to appreciate the
consequences of the activism of the present Ambassador of
France who risks dragging France into a trap, a bloody
quagmire....

-- We ask you, dear militants and dear compatriots, to
mobilize yourselves to obstruct this headlong rush (toward
elections) and thereby impose a national dialogue that will
permit us to define a new transition through which we will
reconcile and bring together Chadians and reconstruct the
state which is now in advanced decline....

-- You must use all means, in particular the pertinent
provisions in our constitution, which authorize you to oppose
every attempt at conquest, exercise, and preservation of
power by fraudulent means and violence. The organization of
fraudulent elections fits the category of such prohibited
methods.

-- In any case, the elections announced for May 3 will not
take place. They must not take place. You must contribute
actively so that it shall be so."
WALL