Gallup to the rescue. Can Peter Snow bring peace in our time?

Peter Snow: A 21st Century Saviour?

There have been lots of extraordinary things about the elections in Senegal over the last few months. Big protests, vote-inducing bull-burying and rappers with bin bags are definitely amongst them. But the one thing that I’ve been banging on about for ages, that noone seems to want to hear about, due to its fairly nerdy nature, is the lack of opinion polls.

A crap subject for a blog, right? Almost certainly. But I keep thinking this could be important, that there may be some link between the 18 months of in-fighting, political intrigue, occasional violence and the lack of nerdy pollsters drooling over spreadsheets.

Part of this may be nostalgia. In all honesty I miss the daily pie charts telling me exactly what the public thinks on everything from health policy to Strictly, and miss the Peter Snows and Nick Robinsons of this world rubbing their thighs every time the polled public casts its verdict on our political class. And in a weird way I think the voters of Senegal should miss them too.

It’s of course comforting to know what people think without having to talk to them. And it’s pretty useful too - perhaps even essential to peace, democracy and broader civilisation, if that is not too big an assertion for a thoroughly un-researched amateur blog post.

But maybe true nonetheless. Comparing the tension, passion and occasional violence of the daily demonstrations in the run up to the first round of the elections a few weeks ago with the collective sigh of relief as the results were declared, made me wonder why we had to be so stressed out before.

Like a few other countries, Senegal has long banned reporting political opinion polls in the media, originally to prevent their abuse as a way of manipulating the public in the way that historically candidates such as Mugabe and Gbagbo have done so to diminish their opposition. 

But while the risks of bad polls are clear, a lack of polls has some major drawbacks too. While overall engagement in these elections was impressive, my guess is that much of the population went into the voting booth relatively blind about the effectiveness of the choices they had, and without a huge confidence in the process. Analysis was necessarily anecdotal, limited by censorship that keeps information available to the powerful away from the people.

I do wonder, for example, whether so many people would have been putting their bodies on the line in the streets to try and stop President Wade from running if everyone had known that he would probably only get about 35%. Since at least some of the protestors were driven by a fear that he was going to win in the first round, by fair means or foul, my guess is that inhaling tear gas would seem somewhat necessary.

And if opinion polls could give people faith that the ballot box really can bring about change, they might also be able to help deter fraud too. If it's common knowledge that good opinion polls are predicting a 35% vote for the President, it is going to be hard to convince election observers - not to mention the voters themselves - that ballots have not been stuffed if somehow 60% is suddenly achieved.

Whilst creating good, reliable, independent and trusted opinion polls may not be easy in contexts with poor infrastructure, low education and a fluid party system, it might be worth a try if they can provide greater stability and confidence in electoral process, and help voters make more informed choices with greater confidence.

Given that elections can make or break countries under stress, investing in any measures that strengthen these processes has to be given a much greater priority. Opinion polls might be just one minor example of those measures, but an army of nerds to bringing peace in our time and a Nobel Prize for Peter Snow might be more possible than we think.

Scavenging from ants in the twenty-first century, our shame.

It's an uncomfortable truth that living side by side with poverty and inequality can numb you to the depths of its injustice. True I think whether every day you pass by street kids in Dakar or step over street sleepers in London. 

The shell of my own natural inertia has been pierced a few times before. Passing through streets packed full of tiny shacks in Calcutta as a 19 year old was probably my first. Another was more recently in Ivory Coast where families who had lost next to everything were sharing what little they had left with those who had lost even more.

Then this week I arrived in a small village in the Guera region of Chad, a painful 11 hours drive east of the capital Ndjamena, to witness a sight I didn't quite understand at first, but that ended up shocking me more than anything else I have seen since arriving in the region 16 months ago.

On entering the village, to the left and right of us were groups of women battering the dry, dusty ground with sticks, while others were on their knees sifting through the debris. I asked a colleague what they were doing.

"They are beating anthills" he responded. Asking why, he continued. "They are searching for the grains that ants may have picked up and taken away with them".

I wanted to ask if this was really to eat, if things had really got to that stage, but knew that the answer was disturbingly obvious.

The women then showed us what they had been collecting. Tiny bits of grain mixed in with earth that they would sift out to try and scrape together a meal. 

As a government minister we met put it later, nature has been turned on its head. It is the ants who are supposed to live off human leftovers, not the reverse.

The women in Guera are among the first wave of up to 12 million people who face a serious food crisis in 2012 as harvests failed - 50% down on the previous year in Chad - and food prices rocket. The food these women did manage to produce is basically at its end, the next cereal harvest is not until September and soon even the meagre grains from anthills will have run out. Beyond that is fear.

Oxfam and others are responding to support these women and thousands of others, and we saw two projects providing incomes, food and hope to many of those affected. A strikingly green vegetable garden emerging from the earth like an oasis in a desert shows that water is below the ground if you can reach it, and that there are things that can be done. Livelihoods are being protected, incomes diversified, and new sources of food are being provided. Lives are being saved.

But without more support, quickly, it won't be enough for far too many. The logistical nightmares of getting anything to remote areas of this vast, landlocked country means that food ordered now can take over three months to get where it needs to be. Waiting is not an option. Money can be given directly to family to help them buy the food that does still exist in local markets, but in a few months those markets will be empty.

It's a message that I hope our trip's guest, the UK Shadow Secretary of State Ivan Lewis, will take away. The UK Government, like many others, needs to do much more. And now, before the next international visitor to this village is of TV crews filming malnourished children, before the cost of helping rises so much that far fewer people can be helped.

One other thing struck me too. It is not just this year that these women beat antills to find food, it happens every year. Even in a 'good' year food often runs out a month or two before the harvest and once leaves have been eaten, the anthills are next. The only difference this year is that it is happening four months earlier, and these coping strategies will not last.

The sight of nature in reverse stunned me. The knowledge that this happens every year shames me. Turning this complicated country around will take time, but helping these communities to turn their lives around can be done now. The Oxfam projects we saw proved it.

Help us do more by donating to Oxfam here.

The path to the Presidency: mysticism, wardrobes and rappers with bin bags

Not part of the original design

Dodge a stream of 4x4s loaded with youths in matching t-shirts blaring rap music, stroll past campaign billboards where candidates in traditional wear are inevitably covered in paint, this is the walk home from work during election season in Dakar.

With two weeks left to go to the polls, what is ahead seems as obscured by unknowns as Dakar’s dust-ridden skyline. The big stories are the validation of the sitting President Wade’s candidature to run for a third term, the ensuing protests, and the main grouping of the opposition candidates deciding to campaign together and focus all energies forcing a withdrawal of Wade’s candidature in what could be an apparently honourable but potentially suicidal move. Fail to mobilise enough people to prevent Wade making it to the polls, and they waste time they should have spent mobilising people to vote for candidates other than Wade.

It’s hard at the minute not to have an image of that scene in Jurassic Park when all the wee dinosaurs were brusquely dismissed by the T-Rex. But all depends on the effectiveness of the campaigning on show, and the techniques chosen. Not all of them are orthodox or familiar to British audiences, so here are my favourite three to date:

1.       Mobilising the spirit world

Just as no wrestling match is complete without elaborate rituals of magic-water pouring, egg throwing or mirror-wielding, it appears no election is complete without a bit of vote-inducing mysticism. President Wade is the one most commonly cited in this context, with unconfirmed reports over the last few weeks including him organising the slaughter and burial of 87 bulls following the advice of his spiritual guide, and releasing all female prisoners for one day – 20^th January – allegedly in accordance with some numerological something or other. Truth or rumour, I don’t know, but neither story provoked surprise or disbelief.

2.       Clothing the 500,000

Months ago I wrote about the ‘price of a protest’ – how much different citizens, from youths to wrestlers, are supposed to earn by taking part in ruling party demonstrations. As well as money, material for clothes has always been part of the bargain – women decked out in new dresses made in party colours are central to most demonstrations. Once again it is Wade who has adopted this tactic most whole-heartedly, reportedly buying 3000km of blue material, enough to cover the distance between Dakar and Casablanca. Needing about 6m per woman’s boubou (don’t ask me how I know this), this should clothe 500,000 women – not a bad electoral base, and at a price of £600,000 possibly a bargain.

3.       Rappers with binbags

The most impressive and inspirational part of the election campaign, and of democratic opposition over the last year, has not come from the sometimes disappointing opposition politicians but from masses of politically engaged and civically conscious youngsters mobilised by some the country’s most well known rappers. Under the banner of “Y en a marre” (‘tired of it’) rappers including Kilifeu (something like 'father of the family'), Thiat ('Lastborn') and Fou Malade ('Crazy Sick') have mobilised a new generation of potential voters with a message of strictly peaceful protest and the promotion of a ‘new Senegalese citizen’. Rallies start bang on time, and after music and speeches organising people to protest against the regime bin bags are handed out so that the assembled crowd can clear up after themselves.

It’s hard not to be impressed. A section of the population motivated by civic conscience rather than self-advancement, ready to put their bodies on the line in protest while attacking no one, and then clearing up after themselves at the end – if this is the new Senegalese citizen, bring me my passport application and stop slaughtering that bull.

How to predict the African Cup of Nations without a psychic octopus

A Niger fan. Sadly, the wearing of gazelle horns
had no correlation to footballing performance

The African Cup of Nations is that time every two years where football comes home.

With more Premier League spectators than anywhere else in the world, the face of the world’s football fan is no longer white, beer-soaked and Mancunian – it’s young, african and it’s crammed around a tiny TV using using spare cutlery to improve the signal.

It’s also that time every two years where the world’s commentators get to brush off their best/worst racial euphemisms to describe the continent’s ‘athletic’, ‘enthusiastic’ but apparenly ‘tactically naive’ players (of course the same is also done with 'efficient' German and 'indulgent' French teams). A perfect place for Ron Atkinson’s return surely.

My own experience so far has been mixed. Senegal’s humiliation was a triumph of arrogance over talent, but watching Mali qualify first in the back streets of Bamako then on an enormous screen by the River Niger with hundreds of fans was exactly what this sport is supposed to be about – passion and utterly unwarranted optimism. 

My other preoccupation has been to try and find a correlation between a political phenomenon and footballing performance, for no other reason to find something to write about on this blog. It’s a proud tradition that includes using economic indicators to predict the last World Cup, which of course turned out to be less accurate than asking a psychic Octopus.

Not recording them below would be to admit I wasted an entire afternoon looking at tables of economic indicators for nothing, using a methodology no more scientific than pointing a camera at sealife, so here you go…

Theory 1 : Oil. While petrodollars certainly don’t harm one’s chances of hosting a major international football tournament these days, its impact on success in that tournament is less clear. The unexpectedly strong performance of the ‘oil giant/football minnows’ of Libya (4 points), Equitorial Guinea (6 points and) and Gabon  (9 points) gave this theory hope, but the respective poor performance and non-qualification of Angola and Nigeria makes a nonsense of it.  Chocolate and copper exportation, however, seems to be the golden ticket, with Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana and Zambia dominating proceedings to date. Verdict = unproven.

Theory 2 : Stable democracy. Perhaps only three of the eight qualifying countries (Ghana, Zambia and Mali) could be classed as stable democracies, and Mali’s Tuareg rebellion putting this latter categorisation in doubt. The others include two petro-states with a window-dressing democracy (Equitorial Guinea and Gabon), a state split into two after decades of civil war (Sudan), the revolutionary home of the Arab Spring (Tunisia) and finally one whose President had to be dragged away at gunpoint after refusing to admit he lost the election (Cote d’Ivoire). Get rid of the criteria ‘stable’, however, and you could say five out of eight, which isn’t bad… Verdict = false.

Theory 3: Economic Growth. The average 2010 (ie. pre Arab Spring) GDP growth rate for all 16 competitors in the tournament was 4.36%, a lot better one imagines than the average growth rate of this summer’s Euro 2012. But which group of countries performed best? At 5.12% the four countries topping their groups recorded rates above the average, but the highest performers by far were those that came bottom, recording an enviable rate of 6.53% thanks in part to rates of growth Niger and Botswana almost in complete contrast to their footballing abilities. But the difference between teams that qualified and those that didn’t – a perhaps statistically insignificant 4.11% vs 4.63%. Verdict = unproven.

Theory 4 : A revolutionary spirit. Arms or popular revolt have caused a change of government or secession in five of the tournament’s countries over the last few years  (Cote d’Ivoire, Tunisia, Sudan, Libya and Niger). The first three all qualified from the groups, while Libya far outshone expectations and Niger amazed everyone just by turning up. Much more fancied teams like Senegal and Morocco – both flirting with revolutionary impulses but ultimately hanging back – were the tournaments big dissapointments. The lesson seems to be – if you are going to revolt, do it properly. Football doesn’t like a bottler. Verdict = possible (if you ignore the glaring failure of revolutionary Egypt, winners of the last 3 tournaments, to qualify)

Theory 5 : A lack of social conscience. 27 footballers from four countries (Senegal, Mali, Bukina Faso, Niger) in West Africa joined an Oxfam campaign to sound the alarm about a coming food crisis in the region, recording videos calling on governments to act togther to ‘gagnons le match contre la faim’ (‘win the match against hunger’). A great initiative, but one that backfired for them – of the group games played by these four teams the result was : played 12, won 2, lost 10. Verdict = DEFINITELY TRUE

So the lesson if you want to win this tournament ? Sell chocolate not oil, overturn your government (fully) by force, and never under any circumstance take part in a charitable cause. The trophy, then, will go to Cote d’Ivoire. 

In the streets, in the courtroom… in Hogwarts

Police clashing with protestors, Dakar, 27 Jan 2012

This weekend had all the ingredients of being one of those moments in Senegal where in twenty years time your children ask you 'where were you when...?'

The ongoing saga of whether the current President Wade would be allowed to run for a third term was controversially answered last night as the Constitutional Court gave the green light.

At the same time they rejected that of one of his potential rivals, singer Youssou N’Dour, whose candidature risks lasting not longer than seven seconds. While no official reason has yet been given, rumours are that the Court claims a problem with the number of signatures collected - furiously denied by the singer himself who claims foul play.

A duo with Wyclef Jean - who used to be the 'next President of Haiti' before similarly being disqualified - is surely on the cards.

Dakar has been geared up for this for weeks - strikes, demonstrations and a heavy police presence have been the norm for Dakarois these last few days - and everyone awaits to see what happens next.

Last night demonstrators camped out in the main square last night, tyres were burned in streets across the city, students smashed up university buildings, and clashes with police left one officer dead.

But what happens next no one is sure - an strange calm appears to have returned, and no one knows whether young, vocal demonstrators will be joined by the political opposition and the broader public, or whether it will wither away all too easily.

The battle is continues in the courtroom though, with Youssou Ndour appealing the decision, and rumours that Wade is similarly going to contest the acceptance of three of his main rivals on various grounds.

Momentous events perhaps, and let's pray peaceful ones. And when my children ask me where I was when this all happened, what will I be able to tell them? "I was in Mali, in the cinema, watching Harry Potter". Oh Hermione.

My view of the Dakar demos

Dinosaurs, magic numbers and celebrity reading tests: Five things from Senegal's elections that you probably won't see back home

Election season is firmly upon us in Dakar, with the first round of a heated Presidential poll not much more than seven weeks away. The candidates are declared, the billboards are up, the T-shirts are printed.

It’s billed as a turning point moment in the country – a possible second democratic change of regime following the first democratic ‘alternance’ in 2000, with a divisive incumbent pressing for a third term on contested constitutional grounds.

Democracy and governance in Senegal has its flaws – ranked 93^rd out of 165 countries by the Economist Intelligence Unit – but it’s also quite impressive to watch and these elections seem at this point at least open, free and informed by a vibrant public debate. Apathy is not an issue, and while it may be source of fraction in the short-term, you can see firsthand how it is also acting as a mostly peaceful ‘release valve’ for simmering discontent.

I love elections. Love stats, the spin, the battle of ideas and organisation. I’ve stayed up until the small hours watching the results of Scottish local elections, obsessed over West Wing election episodes crowning fictional Presidents, and plan to do the same over the next two months.

And I love electioneering, and while this one shares the majority of the usual traits you see in any election, anywhere - there is no shortage of baby-kissing or ‘spontaneous’ crowds - here are five traits of a Senegalese election I would not imagine Peter Snow to be talking about back home.

1.    Dinosaurs walking the earth: Given that the majority of Senegal’s population is under 25, it is curious that that the five most serious candidates have an average age of 65. The sitting President would rule until he was 93 if he won this poll; even the ‘candidate of youth’ is 43 – just a year short of the average age of Cameron-Clegg-Miliband (itself a sign of just how much a career politician you now have to be in the UK if you want to be a PM by a media-friendly age).

The age gap probably partly reflects a cultural attitude to respecting the experience of elders, and partly a continued grasp of power from the post-independence generation. It might even be preferable to the young robots we get, but either way, you do wonder how long it will last.

2.    Magic Numbers: This week’s front pages included claims that the current President (and one of the main challengees) was driven by the discipline of numerology in his big electoral decisions. I’ll be honest, I can’t begin to explain it but the idea is that his decision to release female prisoners on 20^th January, the changing of term lengths and the decision to go for a third term have all been influenced by mathematical insight around the numbers 1,9 and 0. If you read French and want to learn more, set yourself away here.

My guess is that it is mostly nonsense, but did note that if you alphabetise the multiplication of the year 2015 by 10 (Downing Street), add the age of Margaret Thatcher and subtract the circumference of Tony Blair, you do not get ‘Nick Clegg PM’.

3.    Celebrity reading tests: The biggest splash last week was the news of Senegalese superstar Youssou N’dour swapping the microphone for the megaphone and formally entering the race. And as a rags-to-riches singer and now businessman who remains widely popular, why not. Except that there are threats to make him take a test before his candidature is validated, to ensure that he complies with the constitutional criteria to read, speak and write French fluently.

A dirty oppositional trick trying to highlight his main perceived weakness – having never finished school – but my main worry is the impact of this abroad. Now even Cantona is running in France, 2015 in UK may need some celebrity candidates and I just hope this never puts off N’Dubz from running. Daffy, the country needs you.

4.   The role of guesswork: You can’t go two days in the UK without reading an opinion poll - policies are targeted in response to them, election strategies are based on them, voting choices are often made because of them. But publishing opinion polls is not allowed in Senegal. The big political parties have their own, but not the public. So ask me which candidate has a chance of winning, what parts of the country support which person, what policies are most important to the ‘average Senegalese’ and I couldn’t tell you objectively, and nor can anyone else.

This seems important not just in helping politicians to know more about the opinions of their electorate, and for the electorate to know about the credibility of some candidates, but in making a peaceful acceptance of the result more likely. Much less of a shock if you already knew your candidate was likely to lose. Manipulated polls – the reason why publishing polls are banned in the first place – could, of course, have the opposite effect: both candidates in Ivory Coast waved around opinion polls giving them clear victories before the election, leaving one side’s supporters unable to believe the validity of the final ballot.

5.    Doing it for your CV: It’s always nice to add things to your CV – new hobbies, skills and experience. Well for €10,000 you can add ‘former Presidential candidate for the Republic of Senegal’. Certainly that is the accusation of many people towards a good number of the 20+ candidates who won’t get more than 1% of the vote, or may not see it through to the end.

To be fair though, Nick Clegg was probably just doing the same.

New Year Revolutions - The Dakar Side of the Toon in 2012

“I never make predictions, and I never will” - Gazza’s wisest words outside of his counsel to Raoul Moat, and worth listening to given how 2011 made a mockery of expert predictors on the telly the world over.

To be fair it has been a year like no other, especially traumatic for the merchants of evil and Viagra. No one can have expected Bin Laden, Kim Jong-Il and Gaddafi to expire in the same year as Italy saw it’s last Presidential Bunga Bunga party. Dreams of global tantric domination crushed by bond markets and B52s.

This blog was no better, with clairvoyance that included an early light dismissal of unrest in Tunisia (harbinger of the Arab Spring), a punt that conflict in Cote d'Ivoire would end in power-sharing rather gun-toting (do ask M. Gbagbo how that went next time you’re in The Hague) and that M. Alan Pardew would be a disaster for Newcastle Utd (top half, baby).

Any point trying again for 2012? I’ve got nothing expert to add about the Eurozone (will stay together somehow, at great cost to Germans), Euro 2012 (England will not win, at great cost to Polish bars), or the Olympics (Boris will win everything, at great cost to us all), but here a couple of amateur guesses on what 2012 might bring for this blog.

The most unpredictable may be the most significant - Senegal's presidential elections take place in February and March, with a widely criticised incumbent seeking to win a hugely controversial third term against a deeply divided opposition. Best guesses are that we'll have a new President named Sall or Seck (or even N'dour), although with enough means and cunning there`s nothing to say (and few polls to help us guess) that another five years of Me. Abdoulaye Wade are unthinkable.

What is sure is that the process is going to be messy, perhaps even dangerous for a historically peaceful country proud of the fact it has never had coup, a civil war or major unrest. Among many potential flashpoints coming up in the next few months, the most dangerous perhaps will be if he wins – even if done fairly, there are enough people who simply might not believe it, and might not stand for it.

Elsewhere Cote d’Ivoire should continue to repair itself after a conflict-torn 2011, whilst worries turn instead to Nigeria, whose fragile peace and stability is being profoundly challenged by terrorists within its borders – 39 people were killed in bomb attacks in churches on Christmas Day. The country is home to some fractious religious and cultural divides, and as by far the region’s political and economic superpower any degradation will come at a heavy cost.

Food concerns will grow, as I wrote about in my last blog post, and around April see the world’s attention turn a bit, and a bit late, towards the northern part of the region as a food crisis predicted in November hits its peak. We’ll shake our heads as that awful image of a malnourished child hits our screens once again – but do remember then that we knew now that this was coming.

2012 will not be all doom and gloom. A food crisis might be averted with early action – the politics in the region are better placed than ever to do so, although the outside world may be too exhausted to assist. Many parts of the region will continue to grow, if unevenly and sporadically, and democracy should be further enshrined with successful (if occasionally wobbly) elections in Mali, Ghana and Sierra Leone.

In terms of sporting glory, sadly I don’t see Senegal topping the podium often in Stratford this summer unless La Lutte Senegalaise is introduced at the last minute, but I do predict a West African nation lifting the African Nations Cup on 11^th February – most likely Les Elephants of Cote d’Ivoire overcoming Senegal’s Les Lions de Teranga in the final.

My heart, of course, hopes for the reverse, but few countries could do with such a timely national boost for reconciliation as Cote d'Ivoire, while an election and a cup win in Senegal in the same month might just be too much to take.

For me, I'll be following all of the above throughout my second full year in the Dakar Side of the Toon, in which I'll finally master French, make passable progress in Wolof and learn enough wrestling techniques to take on at least the average one-armed 12 year old. The bigger fights are, as always, for 2013.

Happy New Year, Bonne et Heureuse Année, Deweneti!