VZCZCXRO5206
RR RUEHMA RUEHPA
DE RUEHBP #0173/01 0790838
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 200838Z MAR 09
FM AMEMBASSY BAMAKO
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 0151
INFO RUEHZK/ECOWAS COLLECTIVE
RUEHAS/AMEMBASSY ALGIERS 0601

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. 
 
--------------------------------- 
Party Lists and Back Room Dealing 
--------------------------------- 
 
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. 
 
----------- 
Money Talks 
----------- 
 
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. 
 
 
BAMAKO 00000173  002 OF 003 
 
 
--------------------------------- 
Mali's Ever-Expanding Voter Rolls 
--------------------------------- 
 
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. 
 
------------------------------- 
A Tight Administrative Timeline 
------------------------------- 
 
11.(SBU)  According to Malian law, voter card distribution 
must begin one month prior to the election date, which gives 
 
BAMAKO 00000173  003 OF 003 
 
 
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. 
 
----------------------------------- 
Comment: Masters of the Last Minute 
----------------------------------- 
 
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