With presidential elections looming, many in Senegal are concerned that the country’s largely peaceful history at the polls is about to be shattered.

So far no one has been killed or suffered major injures ahead of the 25 February vote. But every day for the last week, Senegalese newspapers have reported incidents such as stone throwing, street battles between mobs of campaign supports, and the houses of politicians being burned and attacked.

“Everyone is worried,” said Mathieu Coly Seck who has a little upholstery shop in the capital Dakar that he fears could be looted.

On Tuesday, a group attacked the Dakar residence of one of the 15 presidential candidates, Ousmane Tanor Dieng, who is leader of the former ruling party. The houses of two other political leaders were reported in Senegalese media to have been burned down.

Meanwhile, in the centre of the country at the town of Darou Mouty, seven people were injured in a battle between supporters of two factions of the ruling party.

Observers fear the politicians are setting the stage for real bloodshed, particularly in the weeks after the polls when the results are announced.

“Each major candidate is firing up his supporters to believe that if they don’t win then there was fraud,” Dominika Koter a PhD candidate at Yale University who is closely following the process from Dakar.

“Whichever way the elections go the losers will cry foul and violence could follow,” Koter said.

Both the ruling party and the opposition are fractured, with shifting alliances between the 15 candidates creating confusion amongst voters, and feeding rumours of betrayal and conspiracy.

Rebellious cities

Incumbent president, Abdoulaye Wade, has mobilised the largest campaign so far, but, according to Koter, he has already lost support of key constituencies in the cities.

“One thing that’s clear is that in the urban areas many people who voted for President Wade in the 2000 elections which brought him to power have now turned against him,” Koter said.

In Senegal and other African countries, urban voters, particularly intellectuals and urban youth, tend to be the agents for political change but then quickly reject the leader they had helped bring to power.

According to Koter, many urban Senegalese now believe the whole country is against Wade, but they are not taking into account voters in rural areas.

In the last elections in 2000, when Wade was the opposition candidate, rural voters mostly voted for incumbent president Abdou Diouf. “Now rural voters appear ready to vote for the incumbent Wade,” she said.

Rural voters tend to support incumbents because ruling parties use their resources to create patronage systems with local political and religious leaders, who in turn have patronage systems with the local population, according to various researchers.

“Even to get simple things done, such as having a stall in the local market or putting your child into school, people often need a connection to their local councilman or mayor.” said Leonardo Villalón, author of the book ‘Islamic Society and State Power in Senegal’ and head of the Center for African Studies at the University of Florida.

Villagers evolve

Villalón and other researchers suspect that Senegal’s democracy has evolved to the point where rural voters are willing to vote out local leaders if they are enough of an obstacle to getting things done, suggesting that a surprise result against Wade in this year’s election is possible.

“The rural masses have come a long way from the day when they said ‘the ruling party is in power because that is God’s will,’” said Ousmane Sene, director of the West African Research Center in Dakar.

He also said there has been a change in the role that local Islamic leaders, known in West Africa as ‘marabouts’, play in politics. “We no longer see the big marabouts making pronouncements on how their followers should vote. Now it’s only the little marabouts [with smaller followings] who get involved directly.”

Sene and Villalón agreed that, despite the marabouts’ ongoing influence on Senegalese society, they are unlikely to have a major impact on the outcome of the elections.

“The bottom line is, while there are many intellectuals in urban areas expressing distain for Wade, nobody really knows how the majority are going to vote,” Villalón said

Calling out the army

To deal with the uncertainty, Senegal’s security forces say they are on full alert to guard against all possible violent outcomes.

As in most francophone countries, Senegal’s police are responsible for securing urban areas while the gendarmie secures the towns. But what is unusual in Senegal is that the army will come out in full force on Election Day.

“I think everyone knows that the police and gendarmie cannot do it properly alone,” said military spokesman Colonel Antoine Wardini, “and I think people in this country really trust the army as we recruit from all the different regions and ethnic groups so everyone has a sister or a brother in the army.”

The army’s first responsibility on voting day will be to secure rural areas. “There we’ll deploy at least one or two soldiers at each voting booth and a light contingent in larger voting stations,” he said.

“Troops will also be on reserve in major cities in case there is trouble restoring law and order,” he said. “We are already talking with the governors of each province to find where hot spots might be and prepare accordingly.”

With tensions high and the result hard to predict, the effectiveness of the armed forces may be crucial to a peaceful outcome.

But for Villalón at the University of Florida, the behaviour of candidates is crucial. “Certainly, if a candidate tells his supporters to go into the streets and throw stones they will,” he said.

“I’d like to think that the political classes in Senegal have seen that political power can change hands peacefully and that it is better to try to work through the system than to destroy it.”