South Kordofan vote enters final day as SPLM claims fraud
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April 3, 2011 (KHARTOUM) - Voting in gubernatorial and legislative
elections of Sudan’s central state of South Kordofan has entered its
final day on Wednesday amid reports of large turnout and accusations
of irregularities.
JPEG - 20 kb
Sudanese women arrive at a polling station to vote in South Kordofan
elections (AFP)
Attention has riveted on Sudan’s central state of South Kordofan as
its citizens began going to the polls on Monday to elect a state
governor and members of the state’s assembly, in a sensitive exercise
that was postponed for over a year since Sudan held countrywide
elections in April 2010.
The vote was rescheduled after disagreements over the results of the
2008 census in the state as well as delimitation of geographical
constituencies were remedied by the Khartoum-based National Elections
Commission (NEC), which oversees the process.
Adam Abdeen Isma’il, the head of the state’s high elections
commission, NEC’s subsidiary body, was quoted on Tuesday by Sudan’s
state-run news agency SUNA as saying that the rate of turnout has
exceeded 50 percent in a number of polling stations.
The election official said that all polls in the state would be closed
on Wednesday evening as the process of vote counting kick-start
immediately afterward.
Meanwhile, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), whose
candidate and the state’s deputy governor, Abdul Aziz Adam All-Hilu,
is running in gubernatorial elections against the ruling National
congress Party’s incumbent candidate, Ahmad Harun, on Tuesday issued a
press release citing reports of irregularities.
The SPLM claimed that three ballot boxes were seized in the area of
Um-Battah in the state’s Kadugli town. It also said that one polling
station was relocated from the police club to Al-Merikh in Al-Bananusa
in the geographical constituency number 7 without prior notice.
In a related development, Sudan’s minister of interior Ibrahim Mahmud
Hamdi on Tuesday visited Kadugli and inspected a number of polling
centers. According to SUNA, the minister said he expects the elections
to become “a role model of democratic exercise” for the rest of the
country.
Mahmud went on to assure that all indications confirm that the process
would progress calmly until the results are announced.
The run-up to South Kordofan elections was mired in tension after the
paramilitary Popular Defense Forces (PDF) attacked El-Feid village in
mid-April, leaving 17 people dead and hundreds of houses destroyed.
The SPLM accused Ahmad Harun, who is wanted by the International
Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of war crimes related to the
eight-year conflict in Sudan’s western region of Darfur, of mobilizing
the PDF to attack the village.
(ST)
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