VZCZCXRO5695
PP RUEHPA
DE RUEHDK #1011/01 1161839
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 261839Z APR 06
FM AMEMBASSY DAKAR
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 4963
INFO RUEHZK/ECOWAS COLLECTIVE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 DAKAR 001011 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR AF/W, AF/RSA, DRL/PHD AND INR/AA 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/26/2016 
TAGS: PGOV ECON SG
SUBJECT: WADE'S ELECTORAL PROSPECTS UNSURE IN EAST AND SOUTH 
 
REF: A. DAKAR 0817 
 
     ¶B. DAKAR 0681 
     ¶C. DAKAR 0565 
 
Classified By: Political Counselor Roy L. Whitaker for reasons 1.4 (b) 
and (d). 
 
SUMMARY 
------- 
¶1.  (C) Ten months before presidential and parliamentary 
elections, there is broad disenchantment with President Wade 
in Senegal's East and South.  Were the election held now, he 
would likely lose in sparsely populated Tambacounda Region. 
In Kolda and Ziguinchor, he needs to discipline his ruling 
Democratic Party of Senegal (PDS); assure voters he is 
working to mitigate southern isolation, and keep the 
molasses-slow Casamance peace process from becoming an 
electoral issue.  The opposition, and above all Ziguinchor 
Mayor Robert Sagna, appears strong in both East and South. 
END SUMMARY. 
 
TAMBACOUNDA:  HUNTING CAMP AND TRUCK STOP 
----------------------------------------- 
¶2.  (SBU) Tambacounda Region covers a fifth of Senegal's land 
area but has few people.  A reporter told us the city was "a 
hunting camp" until the 1970's, but it has grown as 
northerners from the Senegal River Valley moved in to farm 
grasslands or plant bananas in the southern hills.  It now 
lives from small-scale commerce of truck drivers on the 
Bamako-Dakar run.  Passenger and freight trains stop at its 
sadly ramshackle station.  The stationmaster, burrowed in a 
tiny trackside depot, says they run "with some regularity," 
but his thrice-weekly claim differs from a guard's estimate 
of twice.  Schedules are haphazard: "It departs Wednesday or 
sometimes Thursday."  The station offers few local jobs; the 
rail crew are mostly from the railway center in Thies. 
 
¶3.  (C) The local PDS is riven by at least six factions, with 
some leaders weakened by former membership in the Socialist 
Party (PS), origins in a non-local ethnic group, or 
generational differences, etc.  All fear that some factions 
will forego voting for the PDS in favor of a "vote sanction," 
a purposeful abstention or even a spoiler vote for the 
opposition.  Local journalists tell us this has already 
happened twice, resulting first in loss of the Regional 
Council and then of the Municipal Council.  As a result, Wade 
has assigned national PDS organizer and Dakar Municipal 
Council Chair Abdoulaye Faye to monitor the PDS in 
Tambacounda. 
 
¶4.  (C) This decision, predictably, does not sit well with 
the local PDS.  Samba Diop, a PDS founder 30 years ago, is 
loyal to Wade although he resents that Socialist Party (PS) 
"transhumants" or turncoats were given jobs he wanted.  He 
says PDS reliance on transhumants left longtime militants 
feeling "abandoned," which in turn undermines enthusiasm and 
harms efforts to organize.  Despite this, though, he 
concludes that even after six years, PDS-inclined voters' 
judgment of Wade is "not clear ... it's still settling in 
people's minds."  That may be, but beyond the generational 
divide, PDS youth activist Hamadou Diallo calls his party 
sclerotic, with two old guards, "ancient ones," and 
newly-arrived transhumants, competing for power "from 
comfortable parliamentary seats in Dakar," and frustrating 
any chance for new PDS leaders to emerge. 
 
¶5.  (C) Thanks to the PDS' troubles, Tambacounda City and 
Region are dominated by the PS, who, according to Deputy 
Mayor Mountada Dabo, are energetically mobilizing voters.  PS 
strategy, he says, is to focus on strategic villages 
identified as influential.  Opposition organizers get their 
message out by local means -- donkey wagons, bicycles or 
"50cc Honda motorcycles bought with money from Tambacounda 
emigrants."  This renewed mobilization is targeting the 
young, women and "village wisemen."  Still, Dabo fears PDS 
"intimidation, corruption and fraud," in the upcoming 
elections.  There were irregularities in the past, he says, 
including substitution of voting bureaus' proces verbaux 
(vote tallies).  In 2002, he says, the organization then in 
charge of vote monitoring had inadequate staff to cover the 
Region, and he knows of one PDS organizer who simply took it 
upon itself to pedal around several villages collecting vote 
totals to deliver for authorities' compilation.  The PS won 
nevertheless and should again this time, Dabo believes, but 
they would be stronger if they incorporated good-faith 
challenges by internal dissidents, such as that of Ziguinchor 
Mayor Sagna and his ally, Tambacounda's own mayor, Souty 
Toure. 
 
KOLDA: GUTTERS AND GUTTERSNIPES 
------------------------------- 
 
DAKAR 00001011  002 OF 004 
 
 
¶6. (C) Koldois are separated from most of Senegal by a 
sovereign country and long bad roads, and, despite an 
almost-completed impressive new highway linking Kolda to The 
Gambia, they despair that Dakar pays them no heed and 
overlooks their social and economic woes.  They resent 
Socialist ex-President Diouf's 1986 splitting of "Natural 
Casamance" to isolate Casamance rebels in Ziguinchor.  They 
resent Wade for not keeping promises of large-scale 
construction: "all Dakar has given us is a new town drainage 
gutter and an overpriced mammoth of a mayoralty ... and Diouf 
planned that!"  They lament Ziguinchor's receipt of "massive 
international aid while we receive none," and complain 
bitterly that Kolda lacks a governor's office to demontrate 
that it is an independent region.  Finally, they blame Mayor 
and Defense Minister Becaye Diop for failing to improve life. 
 They claim that despite a brand new albeit 
yet-to-be-equipped hospital, the entire region has only eight 
doctors and one gynecologist.  They say poor roads keep crops 
from markets, and that farmers' financial plight is so bad 
"even burglars and roadside thieves aren't bothering to rob 
them this year." 
 
¶7.  (C) Prime Minister Macky Sall visited last July and was 
met with jeers and protest, red armbands.  Moussa Diao, local 
PDS Federation head, thinks Sall is "trying to work up the 
courage to come back" and predicts any campaign structure 
Sall tries to impose will be "an inoperational monster." 
There are at least four PDS factions, including the Defense 
Minister's, but PDS regional counselor Dia despairs at 
Dakar's lack of attention: "It's as though we've worked 15 
years for these people ... for nothing."  To prove his point 
that Wade favors transhumants over loyalists, he cites 
numbers: 18 of 38 municipal counselors are transhumants, as 
are 7 of 12 regional counselors and both Kolda 
representatives on the Council of the Republic for Social and 
Economic Affairs.  Dia fears Wade will lose young Koldois, 
and the PDS Convention des Jeunes' Abdoulaye Cisse blames PDS 
MPs who "suffer from sleeping sickness."  Cisse, pretending 
not to have a favorite, notes that his club some years ago 
named ex-Prime Minister and current presidential candidate 
Idrissa Seck "Senegal's best mayor." 
 
¶8.  (C) Kolda's opposition thinks it can beat Wade and his 
legislative candidates.  Tidiane Ndiaye, Talla Sylla's local 
organizer, sneers at huge pro-Wade rallies as "bush taxi 
crowds" bused in for the occasion.  The sophisticated 
Socialist Alphousseyni Ba complains Wade is allowing a 
"two-speed society where cities prosper while farmers 
starve," and describes a distinction between factionalization 
in the PS and PDS.  In the PS, he argues, disputes did not 
affect the functioning of the state, but in the PDS, factions 
act out quarrels by undermining institutions run by rivals." 
True or not, Ba wants to reverse Wade's strategy of 
co-optation, and claims he has talked six PDS counselors 
frustrated with their mayor into joining the opposition. 
 
ZIGUINCHOR: WITH AN INCUMBENT MAYOR, SOCIALISTS HAVE EDGE 
--------------------------------------------- ------------ 
¶9.  (C) 2007 will be the first election since the late 2003 
start of the peace process.  It is uncertain to what extent 
potential voters will register, and how and where they will 
do so.  We do not know whether Casamancais will reward or 
sanction Wade for his handling of negotiations with the rebel 
movement.  Nor is it clear whether public resentment of the 
region's isolation from northern Senegal, and the lack of any 
real economic development, will translate into an anti-Wade 
vote. 
 
¶10.  (C) The greater Ziguinchor area has some 400,000 
residents, which, if many voted, would give it real weight in 
the national vote count.  Yet it is unclear how many 
potential voters will register and participate.  Security in 
former rebel areas, says Sud-FM reporter Ibrahima Gassama, 
has become an election issue: registration commissions have 
asked for a military escort, but rebels find this 
unacceptable.  Some voters, eager to receive identification 
cards that go with voter registration, have come to the city 
to register, but poor transportation facilities may limit the 
numbers who do so. 
 
¶11.  (C) Infrastructure and transportation are major issues, 
since Ziguinchor has gone through a particularly rough time 
in recent months.  Ferry service from Dakar has been 
reestablished after a three-year hiatus, but the new boat, 
the "Willis," is designed to allow only a few pounds of 
freight to each passenger and is widely disdained. 
Ziguinchorois have awaited renewed air service for months, 
but as of our early April visit were frustrated by ongoing 
delays.  Temporary closure of the Gambian border in 2005 was 
a severe blow, and road service through Tambacounda and 
Kolda, no matter how much it pleased those two cities, did 
 
DAKAR 00001011  003 OF 004 
 
 
little to relieve Ziguinchor.  Finally, there is resentment 
that the only major road-building in the South links Kolda to 
the Gambian border without a direct link to Ziguinchor.  The 
only reason for optimism we heard, in both Ziguinchor and 
Kolda, was a recent visit by Indian engineers to explore 
construction of a rail link to Tambacounda. 
 
¶12.  (C) The PDS in Ziguinchor has the usual factions pitting 
a local deputy against a minister against the president of 
the regional council ... we even identified a brand new youth 
faction.  In 2002, these factions applied a "vote sanction" 
against rivals and allowed the PS' Robert Sagna to regain the 
mayoralty and reestablish himself as a national political 
power.  Wade in turn "parachuted" a trusted adviser, 
Secretary General at the Presidency Abdoulaye Balde, into 
 
SIPDIS 
Ziguinchor to knock heads (literally, in a late 2005 party 
meeting) and discipline the party, but he has not yet 
succeeded.  We talked to two of his organizers, a Dr. Niakaly 
and a second who would not give his name and whom we remember 
fondly as the political commissar.  Possibly because of 
inexperience in dealing with foreigners, the two seemed 
incapable of anything but fawning praise for Balde, and 
whenever Niakaly seemed in danger of objectivity, the 
commissar intervened to correct him. 
 
¶13.  (C) Oumar Lamine Badji, the Regional Council President 
who helped create the local PDS, is known to be beside 
himself with rage over Balde's presence, and barely 
restrained himself in his talk with us.  Balde, he 
fulminated, is "not from here, doesn't speak the language, 
and in any case lacks eloquence."  Sharing Badji's contempt 
for Balde, Magaye Gaye has set up a youth group, the Blue 
Belts (after the PDS official color), to "tie down the PDS 
discontents who would otherwise abandon us."  PDS militants, 
Gaye complained, "no longer recognize the PDS or the people 
who lead it.  If you take the time and trouble to build a 
house, you don't turn it over to strangers." 
 
¶14.  (C) The local PS, thanks to Robert Sagna, may be as 
strong as anywhere in the country.  He has somehow managed to 
create some local jobs, and even former enemies on the Left 
vouch for him.  Local Democratic League leader Mr. Badji said 
Casamancais were distrustful of Dakar after 20 years of war, 
and have fastened onto Sagna as a "son of the locality" with 
ideas, contacts and energy to achieve something in the peace 
process.  Matar Diop of And Jef, despite his party's 
national-level alliance with Wade, lamented that the "PDS 
doesn't want to do anything for Ziguinchor, because they are 
afraid Sagna will be seen as too successful as an opposition 
mayor." 
 
¶15.  (C) Sagna, while challenging the leadership of the PS 
with formation of his own "way of thinking," or faction, has 
been widely reported to be exploring cooperation with Wade. 
We asked Deputy Mayor and Sagna loyalist Yaya Mane about 
this, and heard that Wade had proposed the vice-presidency to 
Sagna.  Sagna, said Mane, had agreed to accept the position, 
but only if the PS as a whole, and not he as an individual, 
were to enter government. 
 
¶16.  (C) A week later in Dakar, Sagna seemed to us not at all 
in the mood for any deal with Wade.  He lambasted Wade's 
alleged lack of interest in peace negotiations and 
unwillingness to pay attention to the Casamance until after 
elections "unless large-scale violence forces him to."  Sagna 
criticized attacks on rebel recalcitrant Salif Sadio, whom he 
saw as becoming increasingly flexible, and predicts the "no 
war, no peace" impasse will continue.  On politics, Sagna 
sees ex-Prime Minister Seck as a factor only insofar as he 
will split the PDS vote.  He believes Wade is "miscalculating 
if he thinks he can lose the countryside but win the cities 
... because he is rapidly losing the urban youth vote."  Wade 
will "do anything" to win and will permit PDS violence.  The 
opposition, contrary to expectations, will have means to 
counter this violence by using leftist and labor union 
organizers and agitators.  Perhaps reflecting his 20-year 
experience in a militarized region, Sagna is concerned the 
military will react to unrest, but he had no details to offer. 
 
COMMENT 
------- 
¶17.  (C) Even after a fairly intensive examination of three 
regional cities, we are uncertain that we have a clear idea 
how eastern and southern voters are tending.  While 
Tambacounda and Kolda are both regional capitals, for 
example, they do not necessarily reflect other major cities 
in their region.  Even more troubling as we attempt anything 
like a prediction, is that we are never really comfortable 
that our interlocutors truly understand the mind of the 
peasant in remote areas.  As the opposition provides us more 
detail on mobilization of voters -- identification and use of 
 
DAKAR 00001011  004 OF 004 
 
 
strategic influential villages, the use of bicyles or mopeds 
to get about, etc -- we are becoming somewhat surer of what 
they tell us. 
 
¶18.  (C) Certainly PDS factionalization could be damaging to 
Wade, or even more so to PDS parliamentary candidates.  One 
Socialist argued to us that PDS internecine rivalries are 
acted out not only in personal enmities and casting of 
spoiler votes, but also in attacks on governmental 
institutions headed by rivals.  Wade's best hope must be that 
such bitterness marks only the early stages of the 
pre-campaign, specifically the April period when the Prime 
Minister and others attempt to reform local structures and 
put their loyalists in power.  There will, however, be 
renewed struggles in November or December when parties choose 
parliamentary candidates. 
 
¶19.  (C) Registration is proceeding painfully slowly 
throughout the east and south, with inadequate mobile 
registration boards for rural areas especially.  Yet there 
are signs that some voters are making an effort, despite bad 
roads and spotty transportation, to go to cities to register. 
 Critics charge Wade is making registration easy in the 
cities and hard in the countryside.  Paradoxically, though, 
in creating a kind of "motor-voter" system in which voters 
register at the same time they receive useful and 
highly-desired new identification cards, Wade and the PDS may 
have created incentive for critics in rural areas to go out 
of their way to sign up to vote.  It seems increasingly clear 
that the number of registered voters could significantly 
exceed the 3 million originally expected to register by the 
end of the official registration period at the end of May; in 
fact, the number already exceeds 3 million.  END COMMENT. 
 
¶20.  (U) Visit Embassy Dakar,s classified website at 
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/af/dakar/. 
JACOBS