POLITICS-SENEGAL: Where the Ruling Party Never Loses a Vote

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Analysis David Hecht

DAKAR, May 5 1998 (IPS) - The campaign for legislative elections in one of Africa’s oldest and most stable multiparty democracies kicked off Sunday but the result of the May 24 vote is a foregone conclusion.

Since Senegal became an independent country in 1960, the governing party has never ever lost a vote and there is little chance that it will do so in the foreseeable future.

U.S. President Bill Clinton endorsed the democracy of this former French colony when he visited the West African nation last month but many here charge that it is really a one-party state in disguise. “Let’s hope Senegal is not a window into the future for the wave of democracy that has swept Africa in the 1990s,” commented local political commentator Gnilan N’Diaye. “Here democracy means we get a choice of one.”

Fraud has been cited as part of the ruling party’s secret to winning. The local press is replete with stories of discrepancies in voter lists and fake voter registration cards being distributed to ruling party supporters so that they can vote more than once.

Still, political scientist Leonard Villion, now on a Fulbright fellowship in Senegal, stresses that the ruling Socialist Party (PS) would win whether or not it commits fraud. “The peculiar mix of proportional and direct representation favours insignificant opposition groups while disadvantaging serious contenders,” he says.

Even more importantly, voters in Senegal — like in other African countries — keep voting for the same party not because they support it but because of what political scientist Francois Bayart calls the “politics of the belly”. Poor people tend to vote for whoever gives them a bag of rice at election time, he says, and there is only one party in Senegal that can afford to do that.

The ruling party rewards workers in pro-government trade unions with better pay and conditions; university students join the party to get scholarships and membership for civil servants is virtually required. “I don’t even like the party or its ideology,” says one member.

Even the opposition get co-opted. The Democratic Socialist Party (PDS), it is widely believed, would have won elections in 1988 if there had not been systematic fraud. Yet, rather than challenge the government, PDS leader Abdoulaye Wade joined it. President Abdou Diouf made him vice-president and gave ministerial posts to his deputies.

Supporters say the action was no less democratic than in France, where the two main political parties currently ‘cohabit’. But critics note that if the PS had really won more than a sixty- percent majority as it claims, it would have had no need to cohabit. What worries political commentator Mamadou Diouf is that “even the leaders of the ruling party don’t really believe they have a popular mandate”. “That’s the reason they accommodate the opposition,” he argues.

Wade’s party has since lost much of its credibility as an opposition and is not expected to make a strong showing in the elections. Wade and his deputies quit their government posts in March, just as they quit them before the last elections in 1993. They are expected to take the posts back again after they lose.

Meanwhile, President Diouf has almost absolute political power. No one can remember the last time parliament (known locally as ‘the chamber for applause’) rejected one of his bills. And last year Diouf’s supporters began the process of repealing laws limiting the term of Senegal’s president, saying he should be allowed to die in office. So far he has been president for 17 years.

Still, the build up to the May elections has seen some surprises. The very day Clinton set foot in Senegal — March 31 — the ruling party unexpectedly split to create the Union for Democratic Renewal (UDR), the nearest thing the country has had to a real opposition in close to a decade.

UDR’s head, Djibo Ka, complains that the ruling party is just “a group of some men who do what they want”. But he is himself a founding member of the PS and was in its inner circle until two months ago. He was in line to become the party’s secretary general but Diouf blocked the vote and instead gave the position to his young protege Ousman Tanor Dien.

Now as opposition leader, Ka speaks with authority as he describes the corruption and electoral fraud of the PS, having served as minister for the interior in charge of running previous elections. During the 1993 vote, a constitutional judge was gunned down just before he was to announce elections results.

Last month Ka publicly asked for forgiveness for his mistakes. He is expected to be more forthright now that the electoral fraud would work against him.

Tales of government corruption are part of Senegal’s rich oral heritage. Like the one about Amath Cisse, one of the PS’ most senior parliamentarians, who is said to have supernatural powers to make money appear out of thin air and is a major contributor to the party’s campaign finances.

According to numerous reports in the local press, Cisse was caught last year in Saudi Arabia with over one million dollars in counterfeit money and the equipment to make more. He would reportedly have been beheaded but for his diplomatic passport and Diouf’s intervention.

Despite a massive public outcry there has been no official inquiry. Now Cisse is running in upcoming elections. His son, Amath Cisse Jr, was reportedly caught recently making more fake money. Still Cisse senior is almost certain to win.

That a government leader has been falsifying U.S. currency for his election campaign was among many questions over Senegal’s democracy that Clinton did not raise on his visit here.

Still, compared to other African governments, Senegal’s is politically stable and not viewed as very oppressive. And there are examples of improvements to the electoral system such as the creation of a National Independent Observer Group.

Yet many say Mr Diouf is just going through the motions of democracy to obtain the support of the West: Senegal received more per capita development aid in the 1980s than any other country in Africa.

Last month millions of television viewers wept as Clinton stood on the shores of Senegal’s former slave entrepot, Goree Island, early this month calling for a new kind of relationship with Africa.

Diouf, who stood next to him, used the occasion to ask for more aid, surprising Clinton with a request to fund a massive irrigation scheme. Taiwan had already given more than 30 million dollars toward the project in order to get Senegal to recognize it at the United Nations. But work has been suspended and experts say it is so ill-conceived that it may never be completed.

Diouf “is skilled at deflecting rather than solve crises,” says Ka.

Yet many doubt that the UDR leader is offering a serious alternative to the current monopoly of power. If the UDR were to pose a real challenge to the PS, observers say Diouf would offer Ka the post he wants in the party, and Ka would likely take it.