Senegal’s Wade woos voters in strife-torn Casamance

Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade on Saturday wooed voters in the troubled Casamance with a new peace plan as mobilisation against his disputed third term appeared to run out of steam. Wade, 85, who has campaigned energetically throughout the country over the past week while brushing off criticism over his third-term candidacy, offered separatist rebels in the restive region a new path to peace. Meanwhile just two weeks before polls, an opposition protest called by rapper-led movement “Fed Up” drew only about 800 people in the capital amid rising concern the campaign to pressure Wade to step aside was faltering. Often deadly riots and protests have marked the tense election period, but most presidential candidates -- who had vowed to work together to unseat Wade -- have refocused on their own election campaigns. The octogenarian toured several towns in the Casamance, which has been a thorn in the side of his regime with violence by separatist rebels ongoing despite his promise before his election in 2000 to solve the crisis in 100 days. “I propose the DDP plan: disarmament, demining, projects,” he said at a rally in the town of Bignona, guarded by a heavy contingent of soldiers. Disarmament was an essential prerequisite for peace, he argued. Demining would require the participation of the rebel Casamance Movement of Democratic Forces (MFDC) for it was this group, he said, that had planted them. “I offer to the rebels five major agricultural projects,” each covering 20,000 hectares (50,000 acres), across the region, he said. He promised to finance the project entirely and said the rebel leaders he had put the plan to had responded favourably. The MFDC has been fighting for independence since 1982 in the lush southern province separated from the rest of Senegal by the Gambia, which boasts sweeping palm-fringed beaches and is also home to West Africa’s longest running conflict. The conflict, which has seen periods of quiet and surges of violence, has not reached the levels of bloodshed of other wars in the region but has nonetheless claimed thousands of lives over the past three decades. Violence soared over November and December with 23 people, including 10 civilians, killed in fighting. Several peace accords have failed, the MFDC is reportedly riven with divisions and rebels are often implicated in large-scale hijackings and the terrorising of villagers.