POLITICAL PARTIES FINALIZE THEIR LISTS FOR APRIL

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 BAMAKO 000173

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV KDEM ML
SUBJECT: POLITICAL PARTIES FINALIZE THEIR LISTS FOR APRIL
LOCAL ELECTIONS

REF: A. BAMAKO 00073

B. BAMAKO 00027

1.(SBU) Summary: The deadline for Mali's political parties to
submit their candidate lists for upcoming local elections
expired at midnight on March 11. As usual, the run-up to the
deadline was occasion for substantial internal jockeying
within Mali's major political groupings over the composition
and ordering of candidate lists. The names of several
notable political leaders, including National Assembly second
vice president Assarid ag Imbarcaouane and former Minister of
Territorial Administration Ousmane Sy, have appeared at the
top of party lists for the local elections. Ag Imbarcaouane
and Sy may have their sights on the presidency of the High
Council of Collectivities (HCC),which is Mali's largely
ceremonial second house of parliament and likely slated to be
converted into a Senate with greater powers. Meanwhile,
Mali's central election authority has begun personalizing
approximately 8 million voter cards. By law Mali must start
distributing voter cards to citizens by March 26, one month
prior to election day. End Summary.

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Party Lists and Back Room Dealing
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2.(SBU) A total of 10,777 communal council seats are up for
grabs in Mali's upcoming municipal elections on April 26.
Instead of voting for specific candidates, Mali's estimated 8
million electors vote for party lists. Local councilors are
then selected by proportional representation, meaning that
the better a party list does on election day, the more
individuals on that list will be seated as councilors. The
deadline for the political parties to submit their candidate
lists was midnight on March 11. Local councilors select
representatives to Mali's Regional Assemblies and the High
Council of Collectivities (HCC) from among their own ranks.

3.(SBU) In several of Mali's largest political groupings,
controversy enveloped the process of crafting candidate
lists. Many individuals with political ambition gravitated
to whichever political party or independent grouping offered
the highest ranking to maximize their chances of election.
Mali's three largest political parties - the Alliance for
Democracy in Mali (ADEMA),Union for Democracy and the
Republic (URD),opposition Rally for Mali (RPM) - all lost
several senior officials at the local level to defection or
disgruntlement. Perhaps the most high profile defection was
Alima Coulibaly Traore, the sister of National Assembly
president and ADEMA leader Diouncounda Troare. Madame Traore
engineered a very public resignation from ADEMA after
suffering the humiliation of being placed 27th out of 27
candidates on ADEMA's candidate list for Bamako's second
district.

4.(SBU) The second vice president of Mali's National
Assembly, Assarid ag Imbarcaouane, who is an Imghad Tuareg
leader from Gao, placed his name at the top of ADEMA's list
for the commune of Djebock, 45 KM east of Gao. Ag
Imbarcaouane would have to resign his National Assembly seat
if successful. Local newspapers and others in Bamako have
speculated that ag Imbarcaouane is angling to become
President of the HCC. The Malian government is in the
process of reviewing recommendations to convert the HCC into
a Senate, based on the French model, with slightly expanded
powers and this has likely rendered the post of HCC president
somewhat more attractive. Ousmane Sy, who was Minister of
Territorial Administration under former President Alpha Oumar
Konare, tops ADEMA's candidate list in Bandiagara and is,
like ag Imbarcaouane, also believed to have his eye on the
eventual job of President of the Malian Senate.

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Money Talks
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5.(SBU) The Malian press has reported that the list
preparation this year was overwhelmingly influenced by
candidates' financial contributions to the party campaign
chests. One political cartoon in a local newspaper showed an
aspiring candidate telling the party boss, "I don't have
money but I can mobilize voters," while the party boss
replies, "It's cash or nothing." Other Malian newspapers
report that candidates paid from 1 million to 5 million FCFA
(roughly 50,000 to 250,000 USD) to be placed on the top of
their party list. The political parties have reportedly
asked for financial contributions from candidates due to the
inadequacy of public financing and support from party
members.


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Mali's Ever-Expanding Voter Rolls
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6.(SBU) On March 9 Malian television reported that 5 million
of the 8 million blank electoral cards ordered by Mali's
General Election Authority (DGE) had arrived, and that
printing was expected to begin on March 10. The number of
voter cards ordered has been a contentious point of dispute
as opposition parties suspect the Malian government of
inflating voter rolls to facilitate election day fraud.
Opposition leaders began calling for an audit of Mali's
electoral rolls prior to the presidential and legislative
elections of 2007. This demand resurfaced recently as
opposition parties contend that inaccurate voter lists will
enable phantom voters to case multiple ballots on election
day (Ref. A). This complaint gained momentum in February
when Jeune Afrique published excerpts of an internal DGE
report detailing multiple problems with Mali's electoral
list. The entire DGE report was subsequently released by the
Malian government and reprinted in local media.

7.(SBu) On February 24, DGE Director Col. Siaka Sangare told
the Embassy that Mali's voter lists were flawed, but took
issue with the opposition's proposed remedy of delaying
elections until the lists can be completely overhauled. Col.
Sangare noted that Mali's electoral rolls have expanded
significantly over recent years, from 5.2 million voters in
2002 to nearly 6.9 million in 2007 - a rise of nearly 20
percent. In 2008 this number surpassed 7.2 million and Col.
Sangare said the Mali's electoral list was now hovering near
8 million names. He noted that it was likely impossible for
Mali, whose population is estimated at between 12 to 14
million, to have 8 million citizens of voter age. Col.
Sangare attributed the over-sized nature of the electoral
list to an administrative inability to keep track of
individuals who may be registered several times in different
neighborhoods due to a change of address, and failures to
regularly report citizen deaths. Col. Sangare estimated that
70 percent of deaths in Mali are never reported to civil
authorities, meaning that many of the names on Mali's
electoral list, which has not been fully updated since 1992,
are individuals who are no longer alive but for whom no
official death certificate was ever issued.

8.(SBU) Col. Sangare said the commonality of Malian names
posed another serious challenge, and it is not unusual to
find many individuals with the exact same first and last
names among the list of voters registered for specific
polling places. To complicate matters further, since many
births also go unreported, it is not unusual for individuals
to have the same vague birth date - either a default December
31 birth date entered by government administrators or just a
year with no specific date recorded. During a March 2
meeting with the Embassy, several members of Mali's
Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) also
discussed problems with the voter lists but dismissed
opposition recommendations for remedying these flaws.

9.(SBU) One opposition proposal which has gained some
traction is the cancellation of all voter cards that were not
picked up by voters during the 2007 legislative and
presidential elections. CENI representatives said this idea
was impracticable because it assumes that 100 percent of
legitimate, existing registered voters collected their voter
cards in 2007 and would therefore disenfranchise all voters
who either decided not to vote or were unable to collect
their voter cards due to travel, illness or other reasons.

10.(SBU) Col. Sangare and the CENI agreed that the best and
only way to revise Mali's electoral lists is through Mali's
nationwide census and voter identification program, known as
RAVEC (Ref. B). Malian authorities had hoped RAVEC, which
will create a national database complete with digitized
fingerprints of every Malian over the age of 15, would be
complete in advance of the April 2009 local elections. The
program, which is primarily funded by Canadian and EU donors,
has suffered innumerable delays due to disorganization and
budget over-runs and likely now will not be completed before
the end of 2009. RAVEC's original budget was estimated at
around 7 billion CFA, or USD 14 million. According to Col.
Sangare, current budget estimates project a cost of between
12 to 14 billion CFA, or as much as USD 28 million.

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A Tight Administrative Timeline
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11.(SBU) According to Malian law, voter card distribution
must begin one month prior to the election date, which gives

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Malian election authorities until March 26 to personalize all
8 million blank voter cards. During our February 24 meeting
with the DGE, Col. Sangare said the timeline for organizing
the elections per Malian laws was "tight, tight, tight" but
that he believed the DGE at least would meet its legal
obligations. The Malian press subsequently reported that
while the blank voter cards were received only one day behind
schedule, printing had yet to begin because the DGE was
awaiting specialized printer ribbons on order from a vendor
in the United States. On March 18 Col. Sangare, who is
currently in Conakry providing consulting services to the
Guinean independent electoral commission, told the Embassy
that the printer ribbons had arrived and that voter card
printing was proceeding as scheduled.

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Comment: Masters of the Last Minute
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12.(SBU) Despite the apparent challenges to holding local
elections on April 26, Malians are masters of last minute
planning and there is no indication that the elections will
be delayed due to either opposition complaints or
administrative hang ups. Given the sheer scale of Mali's
local elections - there are nearly 11,000 positions up for
grabs and tens of thousands of registered candidates - it can
be hard to grasp the actual import of the elections. The
results will be the first indication of which parties are
best positioned to replace President Amadou Toumani Toure
when his second and final term expires in 2012. The stakes
this year are also high due to jockeying over who may get to
lead the HCC, a job that has suddenly become more attractive
now that Mali appears poised to transform this body into a
more prestigious sounding Senate.
MILOVANOVIC