SURPRISED WINNERS AND SORE LOSERS: SMALL TIME

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 BAMAKO 000302 SENSITIVE SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV KDEM PINS ML SUBJECT: SURPRISED WINNERS AND SORE LOSERS: SMALL TIME PARTY POLITICS IN MALI REF: A. BAMAKO 000277 ¶B. BAMAKO 00232 ¶C. BAMAKO 00073 1.(SBU) Summary: As official results from Mali's April 26 local elections continue to trickle in, we canvassed several second tier political parties to assess their view of the local elections. Mali's three largest parties - the Alliance for Democracy in Mali (ADEMA),the Union for the Republic and Democracy (URD),and the Rally for Mali (RPM) - captured 5,893 of the nation's 10,789 local government positions (Ref. A). The remaining seats, constituting 46% of the national total, went to a plethora of small to medium sized political parties and independent groupings. Meetings with three of Mali's more important mid-sized parties revealed one giddy finisher - Convergence for the Development of Mali (CODEM) - already looking ahead to the 2012 presidential race, and two sore losers - the Movement for Renewal (MPR) and National Committee for Democratic Initiatives (CNID) - deluded by conspiracy theories and hazy allegations of fraud. End Summary. -------------- CODEM: "Can you believe it? We Won!" -------------- 2.(SBU) The Convergence for the Development of Mali (CODEM) party won 405 local offices in Mali's April 26 local elections. While this constitutes less than 4% of Mali's locally elected officials, it is enough to turn CODEM into Mali's sixth largest political party after ADEMA, the URD, the RPM, CNID, and PARENA - a rather remarkable turn of events given that CODEM was unknown prior to the April elections and only founded a year before, in May 2008. 3.(SBU) According to CODEM president Housseini Guindo, the party's relative "victory" on April 26 was no fluke. In 2007, Guindo was elected to the National Assembly as a deputy from Sikasso representing the opposition party, RPM. Guindo and several like-minded followers broke with the RPM shortly thereafter, disillusioned with RPM president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita's leadership and Mali's slow progress since its 1991-1992 democratic transition. Guindo, a financially independent businessman and youth organizer, enjoyed name recognition and support in Sikasso, Mopti, and "Dogon country" that immediately differentiated CODEM from other upstart micro-parties in Mali. 4.(SBU) CODEM ran a targeted campaign concentrated on a few geographic areas, and incorporated technology novel to Malian politics. At a meeting with the Embassy on May 11, CODEM played a powerpoint presentation on the party's vision of the future. The presentation, which CODEM used during the election campaign to acquaint voters with the party, consisted mostly of a series of "before" and "after" images first showing, for instance, a garbage dump and then showing a productive garden in the same area. The presentation seemed to embrace a communitarian ethic focused on the commune level of government and encouraging Malians to improve their lives through simple acts of civic mindedness in line with CODEM's motto: "Rely on our own strengths first." Although CODEM's powerpoint was not exactly professional quality, no other Malian political party has greeted the Embassy with a computerized presentation of its political platform and sales pitch. 5.(SBU) Looking forward to Mali's 2012 presidential election, Guindo confidently predicted that CODEM would not only run its own candidate in 2012, but would win the presidency. Another senior CODEM leader then added, by way of explanation, that one lesson CODEM learned from President Barack Obama's victory was that one can overcome any obstacle if one believes strongly enough. With only 405 local office holders and five major political parties in its way, Guindo and the rest of CODEM have some serious believing to do from now until 2012. -------------- MPR: "Those Were The Days" -------------- 6.(SBU) The post-election tone across town at Movement for Renewal (MPR) party headquarters was noticeably less ebullient. While CODEM is striding into the future with powerpoints in hand, MPR leaders appear to be on a nostalgia-laden tour of presidents past. The MPR regroups remnants of the Malian People's Democratic Union (UDPM),the single-party of Mali's former military dictator Moussa Traore. After Traore was deposed in 1991, members of the UDPM's youth wing repackaged the UDPM as the MPR. In 2007 the MPR joined the coalition of political parties supportive BAMAKO 00000302 002 OF 003 of President Amadou Toumani Toure's re-election campaign. The MPR currently holds just one cabinet level post: the Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries. The MPR's spartan headquarters in Bamako is adorned with just two pictures: a large color photograph of party president Choguel Maiga taken during President Toure's first term when Maiga was still Minister of Commerce; and a black and white photo of a youthful Moussa Traore in military uniform circa 1970. 7.(SBU) In a meeting with the Embassy, MPR Vice-president Drissa Traore argued that certain "positive" aspects of the old UDPM were worth preserving and should not have been tossed out with former dictator Moussa Traore in 1991. "There is a record to defend," said VP Traore of the UDPM. Traore said the MPR's "those were the days" pitch resonates particularly well in the agricultural regions of Segou and Sikasso where farmers' unions and peasant groups sometimes look back fondly on the planned economy days of Moussa Traore. Unlike the more radical African Solidarity for Democracy and Independence (SADI) party, which also counts agricultural workers as its primary constituents, the MPR supports Mali's highly corrupt Office du Niger, which is the government agency that manages agricultural production in the Segou area, as well as the hemorrhaging national cotton company. MPR leaders said they saw no tension or contradictions between the party's dedication to the resurrection of the old UDPM and the need to renew and revitalize party membership by attracting new voters likely too young to remember the UDPM. 8.(SBU) VP Traore said the MPR's goal for the April 26 local elections was 1,000 municipal level posts. Unfortunately for Traore, the MPR's calculations were overly optimistic and the party secured only 357 local officials, an increase of just 15 seats from 2004. Traore and other MPR leaders attributed their poor showing not to the relative unpopularity of the party or its message, but to "massive" fraud. MPR leaders were hard pressed to come up with specific examples of how such "massive" fraud was perpetrated, claiming simply that certain more powerful parties rigged the elections one vote at a time by paying off individual voters. 9.(SBU) MPR leaders declined to make any pronouncements about the party's plans for the presidential election of ¶2012. Although the MPR still belongs to the political coalition supportive of President Toure, party leaders' post-election bitterness toward ADEMA, the URD, and the Malian government told a somewhat different story. VP Traore and other assembled MPR leaders looked particularly pained when asked about the presidential ambitions of Cheikh Modibo Diarra, the former NASA aerospace engineer and current Microsoft Africa Chairman who also happens to be former dictator Moussa Traore's son-in-law. Diarra toyed briefly with the idea of entering the 2007 presidential race and is sometimes cited as a potential candidate for 2012 (Ref. B). VP Traore said flatly that while Diarra still belonged to the party he was not an active member. -------------- CNID: "We Were Robbed" -------------- 10.(SBU) Leaders of the National Committee for Democratic Initiatives (CNID) took the MPR's state of denial one step farther, moving toward delusional. As one of the first political associations to openly challenge to faltering regime of military dictator Moussa Traore, the CNID is one of Mali's oldest and most well-established political parties. Although it has only eight Deputies in Mali's 147 seat National Assembly, this is good enough to make the CNID the fourth largest party in the Assembly behind ADEMA, the URD, and the RPM. The CNID has one Minister in President Toure's cabinet - Minister of Tourism N'Diaye Bah - and belongs to the 2007 political coalition that endorsed President Toure for re-election. During the April 26 local elections the CNID gained posts, increasing its number of local office holders from 412 to 476. CNID leaders, however, portrayed these results as a crushing blow to the party and claimed that the CNID would have won the entire election outright were it not for "massive" electoral fraud. 11.(SBU) CNID Deputy Secretary General Amadou Baba Sy attempted to distinguish the CNID from the multitude of other political parties in Mali by arguing that the CNID's glory days as an outspoken advocate of democracy during Mali's 1991-1992 transition invested the party with a unique mission: "to denounce threats to democracy when it sees them." This credo seems to have informed the CNID's analysis of Mali's recent local elections as Sy questioned whether the April elections were elections at all due to what he described as widespread, systematic electoral fraud. Sy said BAMAKO 00000302 003 OF 003 the CNID ultimately decided to accept the election results "for the sake of Malian democracy." 12.(SBU) To substantiate his fraud allegations, Sy lumped ADEMA, the URD, and the opposition RPM into a vast government conspiracy to rig the election to the detriment of the CNID and other marginalized parties. Taking a page from the opposition Party for National Renewal (PARENA),the CNID also criticized the United States and other Western powers, particularly France, for failing to condemn Mali's slide into what Sy described as a "one-party" state (Ref. C). -------------- Comment: Playing the Fraud Card -------------- 13.(SBU) Irregularities during the April 26 local elections stemmed from poorly trained poll workers, electoral officials, political party delegates, and voters. Scattered cases of deliberate fraud - generally involving individual attempts to purchase or secure one vote at a time - did not appear to be widespread enough to affect election results. While Mali's political system invests incumbent political parties with enormous systemic advantages, leaders of smaller parties are doing themselves a disservice by latching on to external excuses like fraud and vote rigging to explain what are ultimately internal failures of organization and message. Mali aspires to address the most serious challenges to electoral transparency by cleaning up its admittedly flawed voter rolls through a perpetually delayed national ID and voter registration program known as RAVEC. A number of Malian political parties, however, apparently prefer to view democracy as never having to say "we lost," a minset likely to bedevil RAVEC and other attempts at electoral reform. MILOVANOVIC