Sudanese go to the polls in less than two weeks

Sudan goes to the polls in less than two weeks in what seems to be an exciting prospect for the country that has been under one party rule for 21 years.

Both the Northerners and Southerners will be taking part in elections on April 11.

Among those who are seeking to end President Omar al-Bashir’s rule is Yasser Saaeed Arman, 49.

Vying under the Sudan People Liberation Movement, Arman, will battle it out with nine other candidates approved by the National Elections Commission.

He is currently the SPLM Deputy Secretary General for the Northern Sector, and its parliamentary block leader.

“I am confident that the SPLM will win both in the south and the nationwide. I will be up to the challenge and the confidence of the party leadership. This is a serious part of the struggle we have been engaged in for the last 27 years,” he said after he was declared the party’s candidate.

Speaking to the Nation, Mr Arman said he epitomizes the struggle facing Sudan to the struggle to integrate multiple identities and to embrace a citizenship of equal enjoyment of rights and freedom. He will be banking on this to sway votes.

Military college

Mr Arman was born in 1961 in the central Sudan State of Jazeera to a father who worked as a primary teacher and school principal and a home-maker mother.

He currently lives with his two daughters and his wife Awar Deng Majok from the Southern Sudan’s Ngok Dinka tribe of Abyie.
Mr Arman studied law at the Khartoum branch of Cairo University, where he was among the student movement’s leaders.

He joined the SPLM in 1987 and was among the first Northerners to join the movement and to graduate from its military college.

As a military officer who rose quickly to the rank of General, he had a responsibility for the armed struggle, commanding missions to Blue Nile and South Sudan.

He later joined the SPLM radio service, addressing Sudanese people across the country and played an important role in challenging the polarized political climate.

“That time, it was new and striking for Northern Sudanese, to hear a Northerner addressing issues of justice and the rights of the people of Sudan in both the north and the southern parts of the country,” he recalls.

In 1990, Arman was promoted into the senior SPLM leadership team joining the John Garang, Edward Lino, Yousif Kowa and the current SPLM President Salva Kiir. Mr Kiir who is Sudan’s First Vice President will contest for president of south Sudan in April elections.