20120213
AFP
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.

In the capital Dakar, Fadel Barro, co-founder of the "Fed Up" youth movement, refused to be discouraged by poor turnout at the sandy palm-fringed Obelisk Square.

"Even if we are only 50, we represent a deep desire for change in Senegal," Barro, a bespectacled former journalist in a sea of swagger, told AFP.

"We will never fold our arms, we will never accept" a third term by Wade, he said.

Two weeks ago, when the country's highest court validated Wade's candidacy, thousands descended on the square. Riots erupted and large protests spread throughout the country, leaving four dead.

The anti-Wade June 23 Movement and its bevy of presidential candidates along with music icon Youssou Ndour -- barred from running -- swore unity in pressuring Wade to withdraw.

However as election campaigning got under way a week ago, first ex-prime minister Macky Sall broke away to campaign, and others have also held rallies apart from the movement.

"The opposition is too divided, that's the problem. If they were united we could defeat Wade. We can't fight the state, that's the thing," said Aliou Soumare, 25, a deliveryman attending Saturday's protest.

Presidential candidate Ibrahima Fall attended the protest at Obelisk Square in a show of unity from M23.

"I stand by the decision to not campaign individually but together against Wade, and most members (of M23) feel the same," he said.

Wade, who says his first two terms do not count as the constitution was amended in 2008, has been derided both at home and abroad for his decision to run again in a nation formerly seen as an African democratic success story.