SENEGAL: ELECTION SITREP 4: SOME REASONS WHY WADE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 DAKAR 000450

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

STATE FOR AF/W, AF/RSA, DRL/AE AND INR/AA
PARIS FOR POL - D'ELIA

E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/27/2017
TAGS: PHUM PGOV PINR KDEM SG
SUBJECT: SENEGAL: ELECTION SITREP 4: SOME REASONS WHY WADE
WON IN FIRST ROUND

REF: DAKAR 0437 AND PREVIOUS

Classified By: POLITICAL COUNSELOR ROY L. WHITAKER FOR REASONS 1.4 (B)
AND (D).

SUMMARY
--------------

1. (C) President Wade's allies and minions may have tried
hard to manipulate Sunday's election, but as it turned out,
they hardly needed to make the effort. Wade outclassed the
competition by a comfortable margin, in highly competitive
areas such as Kaolack and Saint Louis and even where he was
considered extremely weak, as in Tambacounda. The opposition
is changing its tone as results become clear, calling the
outcome "illogical" or "unacceptable," but no longer
insisting on a second round. We examine reasons why Wade won
convincingly, especially voters' ongoing distrust of the
once-ruling Socialists, and Wade's monopoly on the politics
of hope. END SUMMARY.

HATRED TRUMPS DISAPPOINTMENT
--------------

2. (C) Many Senegalese, including perhaps especially those
who voted for Wade in 2000, are disappointed in his
presidential performance. They know he has not created many
jobs, nor resolved the Casamance rebellion, nor even
completed &grands travaux8 or projects he wants to leave as
a legacy. Furthermore, social and economic troubles of the
last year, clandestine emigration to Europe, and failure even
to provide quick or effective relief for Dakar zones flooded
in 2005 have persuaded many that Wade is a clever politician
but incompetent manager and distracted leader.


3. (C) Wade, though, had one huge thing going for him: he is
not a Socialist. The Socialist Party, in power for 40 years,
was deeply detested in its last decade in power. The
unpopular President Abdou Diouf presided over steady economic
decline, while the even more unpopular Ousmane Tanor Dieng
was seen as the actual manager of economic stagnation, social
instability, and arrogance. Even though Tanor has tried to
reform and modernize, his Socialist Party still seems
sclerotic while its other leaders are often dismissed as
"dinosaurs." Voters did not welcome the idea of a Socialist
return.

A TRIUMPH OF HOPE OVER EXPERIENCE
--------------

4. (C) As in 2000, and although he has run the Government
for seven years, Wade successfully associated himself with
the slogan "SOPI" or "Change." The "popular quarters" or
slums of Dakar -- Pikine, Guediawaye and Parcelles Assainies
-- gave Wade his winning majority in 2000, but he has done
little for them since. They remain crowded, without jobs,
poorly served by infrastructure, poor and often ignored. For
example, Wade specifically promised to provide an adequate
pumping station after the 2005 floods, and was roundly
condemned for not starting the station's construction until
after the start of the 2006 rainy season.


5. (C) On Sunday, slum dwellers again gave Wade their votes.
Construction of massive highway interchanges may well have
caused traffic nightmares, above all for those who cannot
afford cars, but Wade promises that it is all a part of his
effort, "together ... to build Senegal." Another of his
slogans, in Wolof, simply says "I'll deliver," while another,
adjacent to the octogenarian president's photo promises "the
best is yet to come!" His emphasis is always on the future,
on change, on hope of improvement, and on including every
Senegalese, no matter how poverty-stricken or isolated, in
the national effort. Despite disenchantment with his first
years, Wade still incarnates aspiration.

SOCIALIST TURNCOATS DELIVER
--------------

6. (C) Wade split his Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS) and
drove many long-time loyalists into ex-Prime Minister Idrissa
Seck's camp, by co-opting "transhumants" or ex-Socialist
turncoats and giving them positions of power and potential
wealth in the PDS. Sunday's election appears to have proved
the staying power of patron-client politics, since many or
most of these transhumants delivered their followers to Wade.
The most notable examples of this were in the North:
Ex-Socialist spokesman Ibrahima Agne delivered a huge
majority for Wade in Matam, while the ex-Socialist mayor of
Podor cut deeply into a vote which many thought was totally
controlled by Tanor's campaign manager Aissata Tall Sall. In
eastern Tambacounda, meanwhile, despite farmers' deep
unhappiness bordering on despair, Wade equaled or narrowly
beat the combined opposition in most or all districts.

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WADE'S BROTHERHOOD STAYS UNITED
--------------

7. (C) There was much talk over the last two years about
Mouride Brotherhood unhappiness with Wade, charges that the
Socialists had made inroads with the current Khalif's heirs
apparent, and even charges that Wade was "more French than
Mouride." There were, also, serious splits among key Wade
backers in the key Mouride towns of Djourbel and Darou
Mousty. Potentially very damaging as well were complaints by
the Khalif, leaked somehow to the media, that Wade had
redirected elsewhere construction funds he had promised for
the Mouride capital of Touba. Wade resolved the last problem
in just the last few months by hurriedly starting
construction on a potholed section of the Dakar-Touba road.
On Sunday, the Mourides rallied around Wade as one of their
own, giving him a reported 80 percent majority in Touba and a
comparable win in nearby Djourbel.

CHARISMA COUNTS
--------------

8. (C) Wade is an intriguing, perplexing, sometimes weirdly
unpredictable, funny, avuncular, frustrating, contradictory
and always watchable political personality. His opponents,
meanwhile, include a gray apparatchik (Tanor),an equally
gray international diplomat and banker (Moustapha Niasse),
and a somewhat more vivid but often dour and
straight-laced-sounding Idrissa Seck. Charisma-wise, there
was simply no competition: Wade draws the camera, his rivals
don't.

THE YOUNG SEEK REPRESENTATION, AND WOMEN TOO
--------------

9. (C) At least three candidates pitched appeals to young
people. One, Talla Sylla, despite an impressive brain trust
of young men and women, extensive networking in the religious
community and excellent press coverage, recognized publicly
on Monday that he had failed to gain an appreciable vote.
Idrissa Seck pitched his campaign ("jobs and food") to the
slums' unemployed young and succeeded, if initial returns are
any indication, in sharing their vote with Wade. Yet young
people still look up to Wade as representative of the
dispossessed outsider, and appear to have voted heavily for
him.


10. (C) Women also appear to have favored Wade and to have
voted heavily. Our election monitors throughout the country
observed that women dominated the voting booth later in the
day, and one woman told us "of course we come late. We have
to prepare tieboudienne (spicy fish, a national dish) in the
morning." Despite considerable increases in the prices of
the "panier de la menagere" or market basket over the last
few years, these women appear to have gone overwhelmingly for
Wade. In examining the reasons for this, Wade represents
hope, has expanded women,s rights, improved their tax
treatment, and has promised parity on PDS candidate lists for
the National Assembly.

WADE IS NOT WITHOUT ACCOMPLISHMENTS
--------------

11. (C) Senegalese take pride in being political
hypochondriacs, in striking the most pessimistic note in
friendly conversation. They find plenty to fret about in
Wade's performance, though when pressed they will admit that
Wade has managed to accomplish some things his Socialist
predecessors left undone or never tried. These include
greatly enhanced spending on education and health; more girls
in school; new or rebuilt village schools; nominal cost
kindergartens to give poor and village children an
educational head-start; village lighting; and some new roads
in previously underserved areas (for example:
Tambacounda-Khedougou, Ziguinchor to the Gambian border, and,
most recently, Kolda to the Gambian border and to Sedhiou).
Construction of new Dakar interchanges may have gummed up
urban mobility for months, but even though not yet completed
they already look impressive and show evidence, as we hear
often, that "the old man is at least doing something. The
country's moving."

MONEY AND MANIPULATION CERTAINLY DIDN'T HURT
--------------

12. (C) Wade spent massive amounts of money on this
election, both from his political accounts and from the state
coffers. He recently raised salaries for military, police,
teachers and other civil servants and gained their gratitude
and that of the extended families they support. Meanwhile,
Wade was assuring the support or at least the benign
neutrality of national level religious leaders, building
roads to Touba for the Mourides, and contributing to a new

DAKAR 00000450 003 OF 003


cultural center in Tivouane for the Tidjanes. For local
marabouts, there was, by many accounts, the more immediate
pecuniary benefit of a money pouch or some folded bills. In
terms of party organization, the PDS had more funds, and
cars, to shuttle supporters from remote or
difficult-to-access areas to registration office to pick up
voter cards and to the polls to vote.


13. (C) There have been often solidly-based allegations that
the Interior Ministry manipulated introduction of new
electoral procedures in Wade's favor. These allegations
include: making it harder for rural, presumably pro-Socialist
voters to register; suppression of the vote to enable the PDS
to constitute a majority rather than simply a plurality;
elimination of registration cards that one could stamp and
non-provision of indelible ink, supposedly to make fraud
easier; etc., etc. To the extent these charges are true, it
is clear that Interior Ministry contributed to PDS success at
least as much as to the efficiency of the democratic system.

COMMENT
--------------

14. (C) Voters awarded their trust in the future to an
80-plus year old, and their hope for dramatic change in the
way the country is run to the man who has been in power for
seven years. They overlooked the fact that during his seven
years in office he allowed his broad-based coalition to
shrink and that he has not delivered either on his specific
commitments or on the overarching promise that he represented
for a better government and a better life. Up until the
morning of election day, they voiced their deep discontent
with the man, his family, his close and allegedly corrupt and
power-hungry inner circle, and his party. Then, they went to
the polling stations and voted for him. There was, after
all, little real alternative among the opposition.


15. (C) There was, in fact, a sign that many voters
considered as an alternative to Wade the man, Idrissa Seck,
whom Wade had mentored for over a decade. Seck took the vote
of old Wade loyalists who resented Wade's granting of power
to Socialist defectors and left them jobless and powerless.
Seck also competed with Wade, apparently, for the youth vote,
as a symbol of change, modernization and, much more than
Wade, of Senegal's incorporation in the global economy. Left
behind was the Socialist Tanor, a reformer in the context of
his party, but the personification for the average voter of
managerial sclerosis and lack of imagination.


16. (C) Voters will be looking for Wade's changes in
government as proof of what he intends. Will he choose a
woman, his old friend and supporter and sometime Seck ally
Aminata Tall, to replace the lowly regarded technocrat and
successful campaign manager Macky Sall? Will he choose less
combative Interior and Justice ministers now that the
election is over? Will there be further progress in Wade's
personal and political reconciliation with Seck? Will there
be new appointments to oversee the moribund Casamance peace
process? Voters will want action as soon as possible.


17. (C) With the votes tallied in all but three departments,
a first-round victory looks more probable. International and
national observers shared the same impressions as the 52 U.S.
mission observers that in spite of logistical problems, the
elections were free, fair and met international standards.
END COMENT.


18. (U) Visit Embassy Dakar,s classified website at
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/af/dakar.
JACOBS