SENEGAL: VOTING IN A TENSE KEDOUGOU

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 DAKAR 000427 SIPDIS SENSITIVE DEPT FOR AF/W, AF/RSA, DRL AND INR/AA Paris for Africa Watcher TAGS: PGOV PREL PINS KDEM ECON SG SUBJECT: SENEGAL: VOTING IN A TENSE KEDOUGOU Ref: Dakar 409 DAKAR 00000427 001.3 OF 003 ¶1. (SBU) SUMMARY: The city of Kedougou used to be a sleepy backwater in the extreme southeast of Senegal near the Malian and Guinean (Conakry) borders, but riots, destruction, and death on 23 December 2008 linked to commercial gold mining nearby ended all that. It was thus to everyone's relief that the March 22 local elections occurred peacefully in Kedougou and surrounding areas, despite the obvious frustrations of the population. The pro-government SOPI Coalition won both on the regional and municipal level, but the eventual completion of a highway between Kedougou and Dakar will probably do more to transform the region. END SUMMARY PROVINCIAL SOUTHEASTERN SENEGAL: ISOLATION, POVERTY, GOLD FEVER -------------- -------------- ¶2. (SBU) Voting in Kedougou went calmly, but the city and surrounding areas were tense due to the aftereffects of the rioting, destruction, pillaging, and shooting of a demonstrator on 23 December, reported in reftel. Campaigning was quiet and rival coalitions were respectful of each other, but phalanxes of soldiers and gendarmes visibly patrolled in the city center and near government buildings. Many in Kedougou and in the greater Kedougou area ("commune") are alienated from the rest of the country due to distance and poor roads. Tensions have been further exacerbated as a result of the recent influx of professional gold mine prospectors from Europe and wildcat miners from the neighboring Mali, Guinea-Conakry, and "Senegal," i.e, northern Senegal, as the people of this region call these domestic migrants. A combination of anger at the lack of money staying in the region despite the alleged presence of abundant gold, combined with the disinclination of the mining concerns to hire locals due to their lack of professional qualifications, has created a lot of frustration. Gold fever has translated into a desire for quick money and that and poverty is creating a flourishing prostitution industry that has alarmingly pushed up the HIV-positive rate to 7 percent in the mine region near Kedougou and to 2 percent in the Kedougou City itself. Historically, Kedougou and the surrounding region are closer culturally and ethnographically to Mali and Guinea-Conakry. THE LOCAL ELECTIONS -------------- ¶3. (SBU) Interviews with government and party personnel on the two days before the election resulted in a variety of assertions about the elections. The army-uniformed clad governor of the region proudly said that the election would occur calmly. The female leader of one of the most important of the six Coalition SOPI factions, who barely spoke French, said that her group would spent Saturday "going door to door to show people how to vote." The opposition Benno Siggil Senegal and AND Ligguey leaders warned against the effects of vote-buying prior to the vote. They warned that corrupt voters would bring already-stuffed envelopes into the voting place, and that pay-for-vote would occur outside the polling place after voting. ¶4. (SBU) Embassy election observers concluded after visiting all seven voting centers before, during, or after the official 8:00 a.m. opening time that these polling places would have been able to open on time had all the material arrived before 08:00 a.m., but in all cases were not. Voting only began around 10:00 a.m. once all the ballots, including SOPI ballots, had arrived at the polls. SMOOTH VOTE, SOME MUFFED VOTE COUNTS -------------- ¶5. (SBU) Voting went smoothly. Citizens were anxious to vote. Men and women were placed in separate lines and alternately voted so that the men would not elbow their ways to the front. More women voted than men and older people voted more than young. Women, many of whom were wearing their Sunday best, tailored their wait at the polling places to their morning and early afternoon household cooking and small-scale selling duties. Soldiers and gendarmes with empty rifles were posted at polling places. Embassy election observers noticed nothing at the polling places that called into question the vote's integrity. Some voters had to be shown the voting procedure, but no coalition poll watcher or Senegalese human rights organization official noted any irregularities in this regard or in the voting in general. ¶6. (SBU) The vote count went less smoothly. Poll workers were evidently better trained to execute the vote than the vote-count. Three of the eighteen polling stations in the city of Kdougou did not post their results, at least one due to a "lack of rigor," as one Senegalese observer put it, which resulted in an inability to reconcile the number of envelopes in the ballot boxes with the total DAKAR 00000427 002.2 OF 003 number of signatures in the electoral rolls. Embassy election observer advised the head polling official at another station at which he witnessed a count not to hand out piles of ballots and count them randomly, but to count them separately and put the envelopes in one place. This vote count then proceeded efficiently, but the head of the polling place faltered once again at the overly-complicated stamping, signing and placing in envelopes of the voting reports after the actual counting of the ballots. Nevertheless, of the counts that Embassy election observers saw, no party or coalition observer heard any objections. SOPI VICTORY, BUT WHY? -------------- ¶7. (SBU) With one exception, notably a small polling station five kilometers from Kdougou, Coalition SOPI won more than 50 percent of the vote in each polling place. In the Embassy's informal count, the totals of the fourteen polling places had SOPI winning 53 percent of the vote in the regional elections and 50.7 percent in the municipal election. Benno Siggil came in a distance second in both elections with less half the votes of SOPI. Voter participation was 44 percent of the registered 6,401 voters in these fourteen polling places. ¶8. (SBU) Ground-level research and opinions vary as to why SOPI won. In a tense and quiet city suspicious of outsiders, interpreting the results was not easy. Election observers might have deterred vote-buying or envelope substitution in the privacy of a voting booth, but would not have been likely to have seen SOPI give money to extended family heads to distribute to voting family members (the local Benno Siggil chief said that SOPI agents went to family heads with CFA 50,000 to distribute to family members in amounts from CFA 1,000 to 5,000). However, in a sampling of public opinion in the main market of Kedougou, FSN election observer ascertained a simmering anger at rioters for destroying government buildings thirteen weeks before, including one young woman who told him that she was angry that the rioters destroyed her files at the prefecture that documented her academic qualifications. The electoral code forbids campaigning by politicians not on the ballot, but President Wade's "economic trip" to Kedougou days before the election, in which he offered "development" projects to the sub-region, and his recent release of 19 people imprisoned for rioting and destruction, might have influenced voters. In an unguarded moment after the vote, one woman said that she had voted SOPI because President Wade said that he would install a working water faucet near her home, this in a city with a remarkable number of wells in home courtyards and public water taps. SUSPICIOUS MINDS -------------- ¶9. (SBU) Elections unfolded better in Kedougou than in surrounding areas: some polls didn't open up until 5:00 p.m. because the planes were late in getting election materials to the polling stations. One SOPI faction leader, an ex-Minister of Culture and longtime Democratic Party of Senegal (PDS) member, said that this "was the most poorly organized vote he has seen, ever, ever." Despite the civil tone of the campaigning, mistrust was high to the point of irrational on the part of the opposition, who thought that the late delivery of ballots, most importantly those of SOPI, was somehow a plot to delay and rig the elections. Embassy election observer reminded these people that the opposition is typically cheated out of an election with a lack of opposition, not with a lack of pro-government ballots. But an opposition figure told Emboff in a post-election phone call that on the day after the election he noticed a sudden and unusual presence of very poor people spending large amounts of money at the main market, suggestive of a general vote payoff. This same person added that many voters outside Kedougou City had boycotted the election because they were unhappy with what they saw as the gerrymandering of the new administrative districts that cut them off from people with whom they were formerly affiliated administratively. Comment -------------- ¶10. (SBU) SOPI's Kedougou victory is part of a countertrend to opposition party victories (Kedougou was long the stronghold of the doyen of the Senegalese left, Amath Dansokho) that have characterized this election. Yet much will now fall on the shoulders of the new local administration as Kedougou, at 695 kilometers from Dakar, is the most remote and also the poorest region in the country. The governor was confident that things would remain calm. The extra troops and the gendarmes are reported to be staying only for the election. In a response to a question, he said that after serving 20 years in the Casamance he does not think that the correct constellation of combustible elements exist in the DAKAR 00000427 003.2 OF 003 region for a rebellion ` la Casamance. However, the sub-prefect, whose house and car were burned during the rioting, sees the possibility of continued trouble if the local population's rising expectations are not met. The only clear fact is that Kedougou is an area of increasing importance that bears more watching. BERNICAT