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PP RUEHMA RUEHPA
DE RUEHDK #0637/01 1551536
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 031536Z JUN 08
FM AMEMBASSY DAKAR
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 0576
INFO RUEHZK/ECOWAS COLLECTIVE PRIORITY

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 DAKAR 000637 
 
SIPDIS 
SENSITIVE 
 
DEPT FOR AF/W, AF/RSA, DRL AND INR/AA 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PREL PINS KDEM ECON SG
SUBJECT: SENEGAL: OPPOSITION LAUNCHES NATIONAL DIALOGUE 
 
¶1.  (SBU) Summary: Despite tremendous government pressure and 
intimidation against it, Senegal's main opposition has successfully 
kicked off a three- to six-month long National Dialogue (Assises 
National) to diagnose and propose solutions to the country's 
political, economic and social problems.  Although President 
Abdoulaye Wade accused its organizers of plotting to overthrow the 
government, the very well attended opening ceremony brought together 
civil society groups, NGOs, political parties of all stripes, 
religious leaders, and representatives of various players of the 
local economy.  Representatives of Western embassies, including the 
United States, attended the opening ceremony in spite of being urged 
(and in some cases threatened) not to go by the foreign minister. 
However, the government successfully coerced every African, Asian, 
and Arab representative to boycott the event.  END SUMMARY. 
 
Threats 
------- 
 
¶2. (SBU) President Abdoulaye Wade called the National Dialogue a 
"plot to overthrow his government by politicians disguised as civil 
society leaders."  Farba Senghor, Minister of Air Transportation and 
spokesperson of the ruling PDS (Democratic Party of Senegal) warned 
leaders of NGOs, private sector companies, and even religious 
brotherhoods that President Wade would be counting his friends and 
those who participated in the National Dialogue will have 
deliberately chosen to be against him and "should not come back 
asking for mercy if sanctioned."  The Minister of Interior 
separately pressured an independent TV station, 2S TV, not to air a 
program on the National Dialogue featuring Ms. Penda Mbow and Mr. 
Mohamed MBodj, two members of civil society who are the intellectual 
architects of the National Dialogue.  On May 30, the Prime Minister 
Cheikh Hadjibou Soumare gathered his cabinet around midnight to 
deliver a message to the nation to invite people to boycott the 
National Dialogue. 
 
 
More Threats 
------------ 
 
¶3. (SBU) President Wade also instructed Foreign Minister Cheikh 
Tidiane Gadio to call all the main foreign representations in 
Senegal to urge them not to go.  In discussions with our colleagues, 
we were informed by the Swedish charge d'affaires that she was 
threatened by Foreign Minister Gadio who told her that "she would 
bear the consequences if anything went wrong."  The ambassador of 
Switzerland, according to their deputy chief of mission, was 
similarly threatened.  Most Western countries chose to ignore the 
government's pressure and intimidation.  Along with the United 
States, France, Germany, the EU, Canada, Austria, Spain, Belgium, 
Sweden, the Netherlands and Romania, attended the opening ceremony. 
Note.  Charge d'Affaires was received by the FM Gadio in a private 
meeting in which Gadio cited the seditious nature of the Assises as 
a reason the U.S. "would not want to be there."  We were not overtly 
threatened with retaliation.  End note.  In stark contrast there was 
not one representative from Asian, Arab or African countries. 
According to former Environment Minister and National Assembly 
Deputy Abdoulaye Bathily, several African embassies, including those 
of Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa, had indicated they were 
planning to attend the opening ceremonies but felt obliged to not do 
so after having been importuned by government officials. 
 
Manipulation 
------------ 
 
¶4. (SBU) In a discussion with former Army Chief of Staff, General 
Keita, who is the Secretary-General of the Assises, he revealed that 
President Wade personally called him the night before the Assises at 
his office to ask him not to go.  The spokesperson of the National 
Dialogue Ms. Rahmet Sow, a leading figure in the small opposition 
party Jeuf Jeul, told Embassy, "The [Mourides] Caliph in Touba [the 
country's leading religious figure] had promised that he would send 
someone of import, but that the government handed out so much money 
over the last few days that they were persuaded not to go." 
 
Yet Intimidation Backfires 
-------------------------- 
 
¶5. (SBU) Clearly, President Wade's strategy to scare people off 
backfired.  The meeting was extremely well attended by a wide and 
eclectic array of actors.  All the major religious families, 
including five from the Mourides branch who chose to defy the 
Caliph, were in attendance as well as a representative from Cardinal 
Sarr, Archbishop of Senegal.  Senegal's better known NGOs such as 
Forum Civil and Mouvement Citoyen as well as leading labor chiefs 
took an active role in preparing the Dialogue.  President Wade and 
his entourage, by choosing to boycott the Dialogue, treating the 
organizers of the Assises with contempt and using authoritarian 
methods to sabotage the project seems to have made a strategic 
mistake and a tactical blunder.  Prominent Senegalese figures felt 
insulted by these tactics and showed their support of Senegal's 
 
DAKAR 00000637  002 OF 002 
 
 
democracy by ignoring the government's ham-handed attempts to 
intimidate them. 
 
¶6. (SBU) The chair of the Natinoal Dialogue, Professor Amadou 
Makhtar Mbow, a former director general of UNESCO, reiterated his 
appeal to President Wade to join the gathering.  Mbow, who is 
well-respected by his countrymen, responded to Wade's accusations 
that they were plotting his overthrow by noting that "the Assises do 
not exclude anyone and are not against anybody."  He said that he 
recognized the legitimacy of Wade's government, but that this 
legitimacy did not preclude the Senegalese from "freely exercising 
their right to ponder their own future."  MBow gave a stark analysis 
of the country's situation noting that many Senegalese would starve 
without remittances from immigrants.  He further commented that 
after forty years of independence, fifty percent of the population 
still live below the poverty line and forty percent of the poorest 
households share only 17 percent of the country's income. 
 
A Two-Pronged Strategy 
---------------------- 
 
¶7. (SBU) In the coming month, local teams will spread throughout the 
country's thirty-five districts to hold discussions with local 
populations to hear their ideas on a wide array of topics from 
public policies, democracy, good governance, environmental 
degradation, to the agronomic situation.  Syntheses of these 
discussions, after validation at the local level, will be aggregated 
at the national level.  Concomitantly, thematic committees will hold 
interviews with intellectuals and key actors at the national level 
to seek their views and recommendations for the future of the 
country.  The whole process of the National Dialogue is supposed to 
last between three and six months and will end with a national 
plenary that will validate all the conclusions and recommendations. 
 
Comment 
------- 
 
¶8. (SBU) The National Dialogue is the vehicle that Senegal's weak 
opposition wants to ride out of isolation after their disastrous 
decision to boycott the June 2007 legislative elections virtually 
excluded them from any of Senegal's national political institutions. 
 Seeing its initial success, it will be difficult for Preside Wade 
to continue to ignore a movement of political opponents and civil 
society leaders who seek to peacefully promote the strengthening of 
democracy and good governance in Senegal.  The opening of the 
Dialogue, despite the threats of the GOS, was attended by a quality 
audience of heavyweights who will be difficult to disregard.  It now 
seems that the ability to bribe or threaten opinion leaders and the 
support of the Caliph of the Mourides may no longer be adequate 
means to relegate dissent to the sidelines.  As former Minister 
Bathily told us, the opening of the Dialogue showed that many 
opinion leaders think the time has come to put Senegalese democracy 
back on track, improve governance, and to weed out the corruption 
that has become endemic under President Wade.