Sudan delays releasing poll result

Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir reacts during a meeting with Haile Menkerios, Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General in Sudan, in Khartoum. Reuters

KHARTOUM, Thursday

Sudan’s poll results, due on Thursday, will be delayed – and a full picture is unlikely to emerge until next week – says the National Elections Commission.

The delay has been occasioned by the counting that is taking longer than anticipated and other logistical problems.

Results so far, mainly from the north of the country, show President Omar al-Bashir’s party has a strong lead.

The polls were among the most complex elections ever held, the UN says. They were the first multi-party presidential, parliamentary and regional elections in Africa’s largest country since 1986.

Two of President Bashir’s main challengers have withdrawn from the poll, alleging fraud.

Stuffing ballot boxes

On Tuesday, a YouTube video was circulated which allegedly showed election officials stuffing ballot boxes, although the elections commission and Mr Bashir’s National Congress Party (NCP) have dismissed the film as a fake.

The election results are being released in little spurts. Most of the results so far have been from the north, with fewer from Darfur and particularly the south.

Not all of the ballot boxes have reached state capitals, from where they go to Khartoum. In results revealed so far, the NCP has all but swept the board, sometimes winning by more than 90 per cent of the vote.

The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) are expected to do equally well in the semi-autonomous south of the country, where the former rebel group are already in power.

But presidential candidate for the Popular Congress Party, Abdallah Deng Nhial, told the BBC this week his sizeable party had failed to win a single seat.

Both local and international observers have alleged the elections have been marred by fraud.

Meanwhile, South Sudan’s, SPLM, said on Thursday it would deal with the country’s northern-based government but said vote-rigging had deprived the ruling party of any legitimacy.

The reaction by the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Movement indicated that any continuation of its coalition with the northern National Congress Party would be tense.

The SPLM led a wave of election boycotts in the north, citing widespread fraud and conflict in Darfur. The SPLM dominates government in the semi-autonomous south and looks set to win big in voting there.

The boycotts marred the credibility of the elections, supposed to transform the oil-producing nation into a democracy after decades of civil war.

“The SPLM is clear that the NCP rigged the elections in the north, but we will deal with the next government as the de facto government,” the SPLM’s top official in the north, Yasir Arman, told Reuters.

“Nobody has the power to cancel this result but the people, and political parties will not take it as a legitimate result.”

Arman said the country’s legal system had been infiltrated by President Bashir’s ruling NCP, which means there could be no challenge to the results. Early results indicate an overwhelming victory in the north for the NCP.

Senior NCP official Rabie Abdelati dismissed Arman’s comments as “political pressure” and said SPLM chairman Salva Kiir had agreed to form a coalition government. “We are not bothered with any other views, the only source of agreement is Salva Kiir,” Abdelati told Reuters. Arman denied any such agreement had been made.

Kiir, who is likely to win the presidency of south Sudan, will also take the post of the nation’s First Vice President and Bashir’s deputy.

The two will then form a coalition government to arrange a referendum next year in which the south is expected to vote for secession.
The two parties formed a coalition after a 2005 peace deal ended more than two decades of civil war which claimed a 2 million lives. But the relationship was not easy. (Agencies)