Abdou Diouf's electoral fraud sparks
International Viewpoint #153 • December 12, 1988
BOOK REVIEW • SENEGAL tive) was submerged by the boots, bricks and batons of the off-duty B-Specials and their associates as the RUC led the marchers into the ambush".
Adams concluded that the rise of the mass movement had put a challenge to the very existence of the Northern state on the agenda. This, and the emergence of armed new political crisis struggle put him on the Provisional side of the split. But as he puts it so well, "the political ground was left untilled".
Inevitably this review has only concentrated on one or two areas. Other contributions include an account of the women's
A FORMER French colony that received its independence in movement which shows how backward the the early 1960s, Senegal has had a virtual single-party state components of the civil rights movement
(including PD) were on this issue. Berna-
-run by the Socialist Party - since that time. First Leopold dette McAliskey writes about what she
Senghor, and now Abdou Diouf, have run the country with an achieved as a Westminster MP (there is a lesson there for Sinn Fein who still boycott occasional benevolent nod from their old masters. In 1979, the British parliament), and Carol Coulter the country adopted an austerity and restructuring plan laid writes about the South of Ireland.
The book does, in my opinion, meet Miout by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund chael Farrell's objective of outlining "some
(IMF). Senegal's foreign debt grew from $1.8 billion in 1985 to of the steps needed to resolve the crisis that began 20 years ago with a popular revolt
$3 billion in 1987. The average annual income per capita is against the injustices of the sectarian state in Northern Ireland."
In 1987, as a reward for the success of the first round of its austerity policies, the Senegalese government was able to
British response to renegotiate its debt and received $93 million more in credits.
mass upsurges
In this "oasis of Western democracy in Africa" where
Farrell points out that all the major initiacorruption reigns and electoral fraud is standard operating tives taken by the British over the last 20 procedure, the "students' revolt" and the opposition's years — the latest being the Anglo-Irish
Agreement - have been in response to allchallenge to the February 1988 election results have opened
Ireland mass upsurges with substantial support. Controversially, he suggests the IRA put its military struggle "on hold", and that if a new serious challenge were to develop
"at least it would to the partition structure, be clear again just who was responsible for the violence"
One may agree or disagree with this, but the truth is that since the demise of the H-
Block/Armagh campaign Sinn Fein's strategy in the South has produced little success. Not only that, but recent indications are of increased electoral support for both the Workers' Party and the Labour Party.
Neither of these organizations has a consistent anti-partition stand, and Sinn Fein's support has actually declined in the last five years. The path of electoralism plus verbal support for the Northern armed struggle is not the way forward, and badly judged military operations like 1987's Enniskillen bombing produce very negative results in the South.
The Northern leadership of Sinn Fein is now taking up the idea of a "Freedom
Charter" suggested by PD for the last few years. It implies a struggle for some common objectives by different political currents, not just Sinn Fein alone. This debate has been gathering momentum around events commemorating 1968 and was taken up by the contributors to Michael Farrell's book. If it bears fruit it will be a
18 fitting continuation of the spirit evoked by this work. +
John Meehan
$420. a period of political crisis. AMADOU GUIRO
F OUR CANDIDATES stood in the
presidential election on February 28, 1988. They were Abdou Diouf, the incumbent and candidate of the SP, Abdoulaye Wade of the SDP, Babacar Niang of the PLP, and Landing Savane from And-Jef/RMND, who was also supported by the SWO. Six slates were put up in the legislative elections taking place at the same time: the SP's, the SDP's, the PLP's, the SDP-Renovators', as well as the ILP's and the DL/MLP's (see box).
The election rallies demonstrated an unprecedented mobilization of the Senegalese people behind the opposition parties. Without a doubt, it was the liberal bourgeois candidate Abdoulaye Wade who succeeded, thanks to his demagogic promises, in capturing this popular mobilization for his campaign. To the masses, Wade represented a perspective of immediate change, there being every indication that he would
The revolutionary candidate, Landing Savane, was nicknamed the "candidate without illusions," because he never doubted that the SP would fix the elections yet again. He advanced an anti-imperialist program against the World Bank and IMF's plans, for a popular alternative and for the defense of democratic liberties. This was the first time that a revolutionary had taken part in a presidential election, and the campaign attracted attention, gaining credibility and winning a definite audience, especially among young people.
Thirty years of ruin and crooked dealings
The PLP nationalist candidate, Niang, had to toughen up his rhetoric halfway through his timid campaign, when it became clear that Diouf and his lackeys were going to perpetrate a fraud. Despite the support of the marabouts (Muslim notables and dignitaries organized into religious brotherhoods) and the billions spent, Diouf and the SP mounted a lackluster campaign. The opposition parties in fact had a field day exposing and explaining the results of nearly 30 years of ruin and crooked dealings for which the SP was responsible. And they did
Senegal's political parties
SP - Socialist Party, member of the
Socialist International, in power since independence, led by Abdou
SDP - Senegalese Democratic
Party, bourgeois liberal group led by Abdoulaye Wade
PLP — People's Liberation Party, nationalist group led by Babacar
And-Jef/RMND — Revolutionary
Movement for a New Democracy, revolutionary group with Maoist
SWO — Socialist Workers Organization, Senegalese section of the
Fourth International.
SDP-Renovators - a split from the
SDP organized by the government which supported Diouf in the
ILP Independence and Labor Party, a pro-Soviet party.
DL/MLP - Democratic League/
Movement for a Labor Party, pro-
Soviet organization. * not neglect the policies of the IMF and the
In the midst of the campaign, despite the censorship, a French-language paper, Taxi Ville, revealed the scandalous riches of the president and those close to him. Among other things, there were villas in Beverly Hills and on the Riviera, yachts, an attempt to take over the textile industry, and
Diouf was utterly discredited. In the town of Thiès, his campaign cortège was greeted with stones. During his final speech, broadcast on television and radio, he gave way to panic, calling opposition leaders "highway robbers" and young Senegalese people "sick youth. " He promised to clean all of that up after the elections, sure that in spite of everything he would win
On the day of the elections, the SP election cheats possessed undistributed voters' cards. So it was a simple matter for them to try to vote five, ten, even twenty times in a system that does not require identification at the polls. The opposition party members and neutral observers came out in force to polling stations to counter that. Watchers succeeded in stopping the SP from stuffing ballot boxes, especially in urban districts.
So, there was nothing left for the government to do but engineer the fraud at a higher level. Thus, on the basis of results from fewer than ten polling stations, not one of which was in Dakar, the minister of the interior announced rigged results late in the evening of February 28, giving 76% of the votes cast to Abdou Diouf.
State of emergency and curfew declared
The next day, February 29, the people of Dakar, especially those from the poorer areas, surged into the streets to protest against the proclaimed results. Thousands, mostly young people, went to the independence monument near the headquarters of the SDP. After several hours had gone by, a confrontation developed with police who were seeking to disperse the crowd. Demonstrators set fire to buses, big cars and gas
That night the government declared a state of emergency, and a curfew in the whole Dakar region. The students were driven off with clubs. The university and all schools were closed. Wade, the rest of the SDP leadership and Amath Dansokho, the general secretary of the ILP, were placed under arrest. Wade was thus denied a chance to challenge the election results, though he said that he had all of the official records from the polling stations. At that point, all the opposition parties put aside their differences in order to mount a common defence of democratic rights.
A united action committee of the opposition was formed; the "Group of Eleven. It's first platform, signed on March 5, 1988, raised the following demands: release of those detained, lifting of the state of emergency and the curfew, declaring the
SENEGAL elections null and void and holding new free and democratic elections; full respect of the rights of political parties and citizens;
reopening the schools; consideration of the demands and aspirations of youth; and lower prices for basic goods and services such as rice, sugar, gas and electricity.
Under the impetus of this, some Popular
Resistance Committees (PRCs) began to appear. They were united-front bodies comprised of political party members and radicals, and took up the slogans of the
"Eleven,"
making pot-and-pan-banging protests, leafletting, fly-posting, and organizing demonstrations. The reformists believed the PRCs should only include party activists, but revolutionaries thought they should be structures for self-organization.
The protests were held weekly, and they resulted in more arrests and trials, leading to more demonstrations.
Trials for "violating state security"
On April 4, national independence day,
Abdou Diouf — who had been declared
"elected" with 73% of the votes cast? _ staged a quickie celebration in Independence Square. It lasted no longer than thirty minutes. The whole downtown area was blocked off by security forces to keep the people away. In spite of the state of emer;
gency, the opposition called demonstration in one of the poorer neigh-
On May 1, the national bureau of the Senegalese National Workers' Confederation
(SNWC), the official union, called on workers not to hold a parade because of the state of emergency, but to go to the various union headquarters. The national bureau discreetly handed the government a list of grievances. The independent attempts to organize a demonstration ended in failure, in part because of some of their leaders' subordination to reformist parties.
The "Group of Eleven" again called a protest march in the Niary Tally area, which had become a symbol of resistance to Diouf's dictates.
The security forces tried to prevent the demonstration, and young people responded by throwing stones and setting fire to tires in order to keep them out.
The post-election mobilizations
1. Apart from groups already mentioned in
(the SDP, the ILP, And-Jef/RMND, DL/
MLP, and the SWO) this also brought together the Movement for Popular Democracy
(MPD), the Senegal Peoples Party (SPP), the
African Independence Party (AIP), the Communist Workers League (CWL), the National
Patriotic Front (NPF), and the Union for Popular Democracy (UPD);
2. According to the official results announced by the Supreme Court, Abdou Diouf received
73s DE h vote, the SP got 103 seats, and 19 the SDP 17.
International Viewpoint #153 • December 12, 1988
SENEGAL culminated in the trial of Wade and the SDP leadership, a month after the arrests. They were brought before the National Security Court for "violating state security." A team of 30 lawyers — from Senegal, as well as from from Algeria, France and the Congo - was formed to defend them.
When the trial opened, Wade solemnly swore to the examining magistrate that he had received a 56% majority of the vote in the presidential elections. Throughout the trial, people waited in vain for publication of the official records that he claimed to have. Even though the legal statute of limitations had run out, this would have given a boost to the popular mobilization
Daily demonstrations at the court
Nonetheless, the defence was able to expose the election masquerade. It demonstrated the real reason for the arrests, which was to keep the SDP from challenging the results within the 48-hour time-limit after the vote. To show that they could not lend any credence to such a mockery of a trial, in which the rights of the defence were totally disregarded, the lawyers decided to stop presenting their case and walked out of the courtroom for good.
During the trial, people thronged outside the courthouse, whose entrances were carefully guarded by an impressive cordon of police. Each day, when the court sessions ended, there were demonstrations called by the "Group of Eleven."
During this period, two booby-trapped cars exploded in the capital's center. The pipes supplying water for Dakar was also sabotaged. These actions were claimed by
"February 29 Movement" and the "Revolutionary Brigade of Senegal." Both of these groups remain mysterious to this
A leaflet signed by "a group of Senegalese Army officers" circulated exposing the corruption rife in the police force. It claimed that some officers had received a payoff of 150,000,000 CFA (about $550,000) to "ruthlessly curb demonstrators and assure the head of state's safety if things get worse." Confronted with a situation going from bad to worse, Diouf decided to back down a bit, and announced lower prices - especially in the cities — for some staples, such as rice, sugar and cooking oil. But the population considered these cuts pathetic. In fact the reforms cost him nothing, since he had simultaneously lowered the purchase price paid to peasants for peanuts from 90 CFA to 70 CFA a kilo. On the same day, he lifted the state of
The second step in Diouf's strategy was to bring the opposition into a dialogue. At the feast of Koriteh, which follows the Muslim fast of Ramadan and is considered a time for forgiveness, Diouf made a 20 speech announcing amnesty for all those convicted during the post-election period, and called for national reconciliation.
He also put out a call for a round-table with Abdoulaye Wade to discuss the problems facing the nation. Wade immediately responded favorably, dropping all claims to the presidency. The press leaped at the chance to distract people's attention and demobilize the popular committees.
This was the beginning of the breakup of the "Eleven." Eight of its component groups, including And-Jef, refused to sanction the round-table called by Diouf. The ILP and the DL/MLP once again tail-ended the liberal bourgeoisie, deciding to back
Confronted with the failure of the "Group of Eleven," the SWO and And-Jef organized a public meeting on May 28 in Niary Tally to expose the round-table as demobilizing maneuver by the imperialists and the neo-colonial bourgeoisie. The two parties called for the continuation and the strengthening of the mass organizations. The round-table brought nothing but a discussion of the electoral machinery and the parties' access to the media. It collapsed in October.
The only winner in this fool's game was Abdou Diouf, who got out of the tight corner he was in. At the same time, Wade was discredited for having bought his freedom in exchange for selling out the mass social movement that was beginning to
Youth erupt onto political scene
A distinctive feature of this period was the eruption of youth onto the political scene. This came as a result of the general discontent with Diouf's policies. In fact, with the application of the new World Bank and IMF measures in the schools, there had been constant deterioration. The government's so-called New School Policy was synonymous with hardship. Boarding schools were eliminated. A system of twoshift classes was introduced in rural areas and poorer neighborhoods. Class size skyrocketed — in some cases up to 90. It was estimated that there were about 105,000 too few desks and chairs.
There was a considerable cutback in the hiring of teachers, and the standard also dropped. In the high schools, common problems were a lack of water, black-outs, an insufficient amount of books and a nearly total absence of educational aids, or even medicine in the infirmaries.
In the university, things were hardly any better. Auditoriums were overcrowded. There was a lack of laboratory equipment for experiments, pathetic budgets for the departments and so on. The consequence was a drastic rise in the examination failure rate. But the biggest worry was the unemployment affecting all young people, whether or not they had qualifications.
Unsurprisingly, student strikes have been frequent occurrences in recent years, but the one that took place this year was different. From January, the high-school in Thies was on strike demanding the readmittance of an expelled student. Quickly, specific demands were added on. Other high schools joined in solidarity with their fellow students in Thies, and the movement spread throughout the country. Preoccupied with the election, neither Diouf nor his government took much notice of the students'
In February, the campaign got underway and the whole of the government's policy became a target of the students' agitation. The "New School" was at the center of the oppositions' denunciations. During the elections, youth actively mobilized around the opposition and helped to defeat the SP's election cheaters. They sabotaged the SP's
In the wake of the vote, the government decided to close the university, although the students were not yet on strike. The high-school and university students had just linked up. In the streets, as clashes developed between demonstrators and the police, bridges were built between young people in and out of school. Diouf had turned all Senegalese youth against him. "Sopi, Sopi" ("change," in the Wolof language), the SDP's slogan, became the rallying cry. Taken up by the youth, it expressed their desire for transformation. For many youth, Wade represented a perspective of immediate change. But young people were also quite receptive to the speeches of Landing Savane - the candidate of the working class, peasants and left intellectuals — who wound up his campaign with a large rally on campus.
Moreover, young people did not waste any time in shedding their illusions in Wade. After his release from prison, the latter exhorted high-school and primary students, as well as college students, to return to school even though their demands had not been met. The university student organizing committee in Dakar and the Senegal students' committee met with Wade and reaffirmed their independence from political
Attempt to corrupt high school leaders
Rather than try to meet the students' demands, the government tried to corrupt some of the high-school leaders. Nearly 6,000,000 CFA (about $22,000) was funnelled to members of the school students' organizing committee in order to liquidate the movement. Those involved were quickly unmasked and expelled from the
The government also tried to destroy the movement by setting a date 3. The price for one kilo of rice went from 160 CFA (about 70 cents) to 130 CFA (around 50 cents), while the people wanted a kilo of rice at 60 CFA (about 20
December 12, 1988 • #153 International Viewpoint registration, after which any student who had not re-registered would be expelled. The maneuver failed because everyone reregistered, and then immediately went back out on strike.
Negotiations were frequently stalled by the government, which at the least sign of progress called everything into question again. It forbade general assemblies, tried to expel a student from Mali, set up ersatz exams and so on, leading to an impasse.
1988 will be known as an "idle" year. Out of nearly 15,000 students at the University of Dakar, less than a hundred (mostly military students) sat their end-ofterm examinations. The middle-school leaving exam was not even held for thirdyear students. The baccalaureat exam took place in a state-of-siege atmosphere. All of the students at military schools and private academies were able to sit for the baccalaureat. They represented only 10% of all students. In many public institutions, not a single person came forward to take the exam.
Rise of a regional movement
Apart from the chaos created in education, other areas of Senegalese society are also teetering on the edge. In the south, the last few years have seen the rise of a regional movement challenging the central government, and this conflict is far from resolved today. Many "pro-independence" activists in detention did not benefit from the amnesty voted by the SP and the SDP.
In Gambia, the Senegalese occupation is proving more and more costly for the government. When there was a mass uprising in 1981, Senegalese troops (with French support, of course) went to the aid of the regime and then stayed on. Now a faction of the Gambian bourgeoisie is turning up its nose at the "Senegambian" confederation, and the Gambian population is growing more and more openly hostile to the Senegalese.
Several problems have also showed up within Senegal's repressive apparatus itself. In April 1987, the police force went on strike. Many were quite simply kicked out of the force. Some were later taken back. Others formed a clandestine organization called the "National Coordinating Committee of Expelled Police," which is asking for complete and unconditional reinstatement without loss of pay. It states that it is ready "to work or die".
This whole pictures shows that the country is in an explosive situation, and upheavals can be expected, out of all proportion to what happened in May 1968. Today there is a national consensus against Diouf, and the population is becoming ever more convinced that this regime will never accept a democratic turnover in government. This feeling was reinforced with the failure of the round-table initiative.
The post-election struggle was only a taste of what the national struggle will be like tomorrow. But neither Diouf nor Wade have anything to gain from a strengthening of an independent mass movement whose dynamic and demands are opposed to their bourgeois program.
A fallback for imperialism
There is no doubt that under the pressure of imperialism and the marabouts, Diouf and Wade will be forced to make up, despite the failure of the round-table. All Diouf has to do is clean house a bit within his party and open up his government to the SDP. But if the mass movement grows, Wade or the army could serve as the fallback for imperialism.
Thus, the only credible alternative on offer for a real Sopi is the perspective of revolutionary change. And it is not by chance that public opinion sees the candidate who supported a revolutionary program, Landing Savane, as the candidate of the future. It is important not only for all revolution-
SENEGAL aries to seize this opportunity to raise public consciousness, but to continue to build independent and united-front structures among all sections of the population. It is through such long and patient work that a revolutionary solution can be found for this neo-colonial crisis.
Such work, which is already showing results, cannot be accomplished if the left forces in Senegal are dispersed. The unity reached between the SWO and And-Jef/ RMND before, during, and after the elections proves that it is possible for organizations in our country coming from different backgrounds and with different traditions to arrive at an understanding and work together in good faith for revolutionary change.
The unification of the long divided Senegalese left is imperative in order to take on the imperialists and local reaction.
Revolutionaries must be seen by the masses as the most unified force, in the first place by uniting their activity around the concerns of workers, peasants, and the popular layers. The SWO is actively working towards this end. *
International Viewpoint #153 • December 12, 1988