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Viewing cable 09BRAZZAVILLE172, C) ELECTIONS SNAPSHOT: DISARRY ON ALL SIDES

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Reference ID Created Released Classification Origin
09BRAZZAVILLE172 2009-06-05 15:41 2011-08-30 01:44 CONFIDENTIAL Embassy Brazzaville
P R 051541Z JUN 09
FM AMEMBASSY BRAZZAVILLE
TO SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 1409
INFO AFRICAN UNION COLLECTIVE
AMEMBASSY PARIS 
AMEMBASSY BRUSSELS 
USEU BRUSSELS 0013
AMEMBASSY LONDON 
AMEMBASSY ROME 
AMEMBASSY BRAZZAVILLE
C O N F I D E N T I A L BRAZZAVILLE 000172 
 
 
DEPT FOR AF/C, INR/AA 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL:  2/5/2018 
TAGS: PGOV PREL CF
SUBJECT: (C)  ELECTIONS SNAPSHOT:  DISARRY ON ALL SIDES 
 
CLASSIFIED BY: Alan Eastham, Ambassador, EXO, USDOS. 
REASON: 1.4 (d) 
 
 
1.      1.(C) Summary:   Congo(B) will hold a Presidential 
election on July 12 for a seven-year Presidential term.  With 
the filing deadline June 12, only Mathias Dzon has filed formal 
papers as a candidate from the opposition.  In the non-Sassou 
camp, it is difficult to determine which of the possible 
candidates are genuinely of the opposition and which are 
intended (by Sassou) to pull support away from the two major 
opposing candidates (Mathias Dzon and Ange-Edouard Poungui). 
Incumbent President Denis Sassou Nguesso is waiting until the 
last minute to declare his own candidacy, but there is no doubt 
he will, by the end of next week.  Sassou and his supporters are 
organizing a media-blitzing bandwagon, at the cost of tension 
within the Presidential movement, as his backers fight 
(literally) to take first prize as the most passionate partisan 
on his side.  Sassou Nguesso is going to win, probably in the 
first round, in an election which will be attacked by the 
opposition as neither free nor fair.  Worries about security 
prior to, during, and after the elections are mostly inchoate. 
END SUMMARY. 
 
2.(c)  Pre-electoral activity is rising rapidly, at least in 
Brazzaville, as both the so-called Presidential Majority and the 
divided opposition maneuver.  This essay is intended to convey 
the atmosphere rather than the details, which we will address 
once the candidates have all announced and the campaign begins. 
As we understand it now, the filing deadline is June 12; the 
official campaign period begins June 20 and concludes July 10; 
and the election will be held on July 12.  If necessary (fifty 
percent required to win) a runoff will be held either July 26 or 
August 2, and the new President will be sworn in on August 15, 
Congo's national day. 
 
THE PRESIDENTIAL SIDE:  Jockeying for the next Sassou government 
 
3. (c)  The most notable fact about the Sassou "non-campaign" is 
how active it is, despite the fact that he has not yet declared 
himself a candidate.  This week, Sassou's actual party, the 
Congolese Labor Party (PCT), held a "central committee" meeting 
(vestiges of the PCT's old days, when it was the sole party and 
organized along Marxist lines), having realized that they 
couldn't very well endorse their candidate if they didn't hold a 
meeting.  They are competing with the larger pro-Sassou 
grouping, the "Presidential Majority" (RMP) made up of most of 
the parties represented in the legislative bodies, which has 
already declared itself pro-Sassou.  For months, various 
"community organizations" have been holding press conferences to 
declare their support for Sassou and to appeal to him to run for 
another term.  In the last two weeks, however, these 
"organizations" have taken on a much more personalized tone, 
i.e. being overtly identified with one or another of Sassou's 
ministers or officials.  The "Jean-Dominque Okemba Association" 
was featured today (Okemba being the National Security Advisor) 
with a call by its young members to support Sassou.  Another 
organization has popped up recently, the "National Initiative 
for Peace (INP)," backed by one of Sassou's government ministers 
who seems to have decided to arrest his declining influence 
within the "Presidential Majority" (RMP)  through public 
declarations of support for Sassou.  This led, a few days ago, 
to the spectacle, not reported in the media but widely discussed 
in Brazzaville,  of the two senior members of the National 
Assembly (one of them a Minister) who head respectively the INP 
and the RMP duking it out over a matter of which organization's 
banner would be within the President's view at a public rally. 
 
4.(C)  One of our contacts, who was a young man at Sassou's side 
(a Cobra, probably) during the civil war of 1997 told us that 
that this election is a game with the highest stakes there are: 
livelihood.  Given that oil (and wood) are the only productive 
parts of the private sector, it is only natural that those who 
practice politics want to maintain their positions, or enhance 
them by getting closer to the source, in this case Denis Sassou 
Nguesso.  He noted this was also the cause of all the conflicts 
that Congo(B) has known since independence.  Our contact is 
supporting Sassou this time, but he hints he will branch off a 
year or two after the election, probably to pursue the highest 
office himself.   There are quite a few like him, who realize 
that Sassou is aging and that there is an increasing chance the 
top job will fall vacant during or at the end of the seven year 
term under discussion. 
 
5. (C) Sassou himself has been extraordinarily active.  He has 
spent a great deal of time outside Brazzaville, on a long tour 
to the north and twice to the south, cutting ribbons, upbraiding 
local officials and government contractors for their failings in 
implementing his "great works" program, and accepting envelopes 
of cash campaign contributions from his supporters.   His 
campaign has two clear themes:  Peace and Development (Great 
Works).  He is working to convince Congolese that his presence 
at the helm of affairs is necessary to avoid a repeat of the 
disastrous bloody civil wars that have cost Congo so much.  And 
he is highlighting all the big buildings and public works that 
have come into being in the past few years (but most of which 
are behind schedule and not completed).  There is a new website 
(denissassou.com). On June 6, Sassou is holding something they 
are calling a "MEGA MEETING" at which his new French-authored 
campaign biography will be released.  The t-shirts are being 
distributed this afternoon.  In contrast, a couple of opposition 
rallies outside Brazzaville were blocked in May as "threats to 
public order." 
 
OPPOSITION:  DIVIDED AND IMPOTENT 
 
6. (C)   From the opposition side, we expect as many as eight 
candidates, including two from the three factions of the UPADS. 
(UPADS is the only other party, aside from the PCT, ever to 
govern this country.  It was created by Pascal Lissouba, went 
into hibernation when Lissouba went into exile in 1997, and was 
revived when its members began returning to Brazzaville from 
France in 2006-2007).   As of June 5, only Mathias Dzon (UPRN - 
newly-created party)  has filed his papers, and there is some 
doubt as to how many more will actually file.  Dzon retired at 
the end of 2008 from a Sassou-appointed position as National 
Director of the reserve bank for central Africa; earlier, he was 
Sassou's finance minister.  He is, however, the most vocal and 
best-organized of the candidates.  The other major opposition 
candidate, Ange-Edouard Poungui, is badly hampered by infighting 
in his divided UPADS party.  There is also a possibility that he 
could be declared ineligible, based on the two-year in-Congo 
residence requirement, based on how much time he has spent in 
France lately. One of today's newspapers reports a press 
conference yesterday in which the titular head of the 18-party 
opposition grouping reports that several candidates whose 
parties are members of the opposition coalition will run; we 
wonder how a coalition could hang together if their heads are 
all running.  There is another batch of opposition figures 
(probably not very well organized in party structure) but 
including a close affiliate of Mathias Dzon's who are going 
toward a boycott or further, saying, with a rather menacing 
tone, that if there's not a free and fair election, there'll be 
no election at all - even for Sassou.  This group is more 
strongly represented in Paris than in Brazzaville. 
 
7. (C)  The opposition has let itself be captured by the 
procedural "texts" surrounding the election.  With the election 
five weeks away, they are still arguing that it should be 
postponed until a new voter census can be arranged, until a new 
board is appointed at the National Elections Commission (CONEL), 
and until several other conditions are met.  They are right: 
The government and the Sassou-stacked CONEL have played fast and 
loose with the procedure, and this election is going to take 
place in an atmosphere far from consensual.  But we also suspect 
that this emphasis on the "texts" and the "preconditions for 
consensus" are at least in part a way for hard-liners (or even 
Sassou sympathizers, or even Dzon sympathizers, if Machiavelli 
is your cup of tea) to trap some or all of the opposition into 
an inevitable logic of boycott, thus narrowing the field.  So 
far, they have not begun to present a coherent "anti-Sassou" 
platform or a vision as to how they would run it any 
differently.  This may be a consequence of the fact that 
everybody knows what's wrong here, but no one sees any 
politician who could (a) beat Sassou, and (b) behave differently 
if he won. 
 
8. (C)  Sassou has spent the last five years practicing the 
adage  "keep your friends close, and your enemies closer" by 
neutralizing or co-opting all the major figures of the previous 
era of Congolese politics.  As of this week, the Kolelas clan is 
holding meetings in the Pool to muster support for Sassou; 
Kolelas fils is a minister in the government.  Yoachim 
Yhombi-Opango is silent, tending toward Sassou, and living 
happily in Brazzaville where he recently celebrated his 
seventieth birthday.  Pascal lLissouba is ill, in France, and 
has not been heard to say a word for several years.  Even the 
troublesome Frederick (Pasteur Ntumi) Bitsangou is silent. 
 
EXTERNAL SUPPORT - OR LACK THEREOF 
--------------------------------------------- ---- 
 
9.(c)  The EU Commission representative was refused his requests 
for funding for election support (for civil society), and the 
request for observers was made so late by the Congolese 
government that it would have been an uphill struggle to get a 
mission on Brussels' agenda, even had the Commission been 
sympathetic.  (We wonder whether the French had a hand in that 
reticence; President Sarkozy's visit here, despite his 
statements about staying out of Congolese politics, is viewed as 
virtually an endorsement of a new Sassou term.)  We expect the 
AU will field an observation mission, as will the international 
organization of "francophonie."  The only/only on-the-ground 
pre-electoral support from outside is two consultants who are 
here under UNDP auspices to work with the National Election 
Commission on support for civil society.  They arrived this 
week, while CONEL/government preparations for this election 
began last November. 
 
SECURITY 
 
10.(c)  There is a feeling of unease among the Brazzaville 
population, but it is based on history rather than indicators. 
Presidential politics have been at the heart of most of 
Congo(B)'s violence and civil war since independence.  Many 
foreign residents and entities, including embassies, are jamming 
the Air France flight full  with dependents, starting now, to 
take early vacations this year rather than waiting for any heat 
to begin when the campaign begins in earnest.  We expect that 
the government will keep a tight hold on public meetings, 
rallies, or civil disobedience.  There is no/no specific 
information that militias are forming up, that arms are being 
readied, or that any of the factions plans to take it to the 
mattresses this time.    We will of course keep a close eye on 
the security situation as it heats up, as it certainly will. 
 
EASTHAM