VZCZCXRO1791
RR RUEHMA RUEHPA
DE RUEHDK #0427/01 0921305
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 021305Z APR 09
FM AMEMBASSY DAKAR
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 2174
RUEHFR/AMEMBASSY PARIS 1203
RUEHLO/AMEMBASSY LONDON 0391
RUEHLI/AMEMBASSY LISBON 0877
INFO RUEHZK/ECOWAS COLLECTIVE

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