One-Sudan policy strained by looming election, referendum

The long-held policy of one united Sudan seems to be crumbling.

No less a person than Sudanese Vice-President Salva Kiir says Southerners would be better off with a separate state.

It is a clear indication that the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement is changing tack.

Mr Kiir came out strongly on this issue recently, saying that in a united Sudan, Southerners will continue being treated as “second class citizens”.

The vice-president’s stance — ahead of the 2011 referendum to decide the fate of the south — is the culmination of complaints by southerners that the north has failed to make unity attractive.

The SPLM, under the leadership of Dr John Garang, launched a rebellion in 1983 on the principle of one united Sudan regardless of race, religion and colour.

And until his death in a plane crash in July 2005, Dr Garang was for the idea of mobilising all communities in Sudan dissatisfied with the Khartoum rule to vote nationally for SPLM leadership.

Only Khartoum and its environs are at currently peace with the NCP leadership.

Darfur, in the west, the extreme north, the east and the south all feel they have been left out of national leadership and resource allocation since independence in 1956.

Although top SPLM officials have subsequently tried to downplay what Mr Kiir said, terming it a mere reiteration of Dr Garang’s statement during the signing of the Sudanese peace deal in Nairobi in January 2005, Mr Kiir seems to have embarked on making a separate state a reality.

According to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the north was to make unity attractive to the south within a six-year interim period, by allocating adequate resources to infrastructure and improving people’s lives.

In a recent interview with The EastAfrican in Nairobi, the GOSS Minister for Regional Co-operation and Foreign Affairs, Oyay Deng Ajak, said the north has made “zero” efforts to make unity attractive to the south in the past four years.

Since the death of Dr Garang, there have been simmering debates within the SPLM over whether the former rebels should have a go at the country’s leadership in next year’s elections, or concentrate mainly on secession.

The SPLM had the option of gunning for the national presidency by wooing the UMMA party of the former Prime Minister, Sadique al-Mahdi. Mr Mahdi was ousted by al-Bashir in a coup in 1989.

Also, the SPLM could have courted the Popular National Congress of Hassan al-Turabi, who was the power behind al-Bashir’s ascendancy to power, as well as other smaller parties, to join hands and defeat NCP in national elections.

Notably, these two parties and other smaller ones in Sudan met in Juba recently under the auspices of SPLM.

They told NCP to level the playing field or face stiff resistance.

The second option being pursued by the SPLM leadership is to make a total break from the north come 2011.

The common belief within the SPLM rank and file is that the NCP and its allies are too entrenched to be defeated and that in the absence of the guarantee of free and fair elections, it would be better to focus on the 2011 referendum with the goal of secession.

The majority of Mr Kiir’s allies belong to this group, unlike Dr Garang who favoured the idea of a united Sudan under his leadership.

Still, there have been appeals to the influential SPLM National Political Bureau not to abandon Dr Garang’s dreams of a united Sudan.

The bureau is chaired by Mr Kiir and comprises powerful personalities like the vice-president of the south, Mr Riek Machar, and other veterans of the civil war.

The forthcoming poll will be a test for the 2011 referendum, which the southerners perceive as a turning point in their 53 years of troubled relations with their Arab-leaning kin in the north.

Some SPLM members say the south should boycott the elections because their dominant partner — the National Congress Party — has not levelled the playing field.

On Wednesday, GOSS head of mission in Kenya John Andruga Duku said the south might boycott the elections.

Yet another group sees the polls as an opportunity to test the capacity of the north to allow the south to determine its future, lessons that could be used to safeguard the integrity of the crucial referendum.

For instance, a stalemate over the referendum law still persists.

Even though the NCP had accepted the SPLM’s position of a simple majority vote of 51 per cent to declare the South an independent country, Khartoum still insists that the turnout in the referendum must hit 66 per cent mark.

President Obama’s special envoy to the Sudan, Scott Gration, has proposed a compromise of 62 per cent turnout, but SPLM insists that it must be 51 per cent at both the voting and the turnout.

Mr Duku says the north has demonstrated that it is not keen on the referendum.

“If the NCP wants a united Sudan, it should not put one roadblock after the other. They don’t want the referendum to take place, and if it does, its results could be rigged,” he said.

Still, history has proved that self determination is rarely peaceful.

The disputed census results and the yet-to-be-demarcated border between north and south could fuel more differences, thus endangering the elections.

Already, the south is up in arms over the decision by the electoral body to exclude Sudanese in Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Congo-Brazzaville and the Democratic Republic of Congo from registering as voters, while allowing those in the Middle East, Europe and the US to do so.

These countries include; Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, United Kingdom, Western Europe and the United States.

The General Election is scheduled for April next year, and could be the first democratic poll since 1986.

The NEC says it has established 15,000 registration centres in the country, while Khartoum has only 1,125 centres in 50 electoral constituencies.

The one-month voters registration process begun last week.

There are no guarantees that the 20 million eligible voters will be registered, given the short time and logistic nightmare in the south.

The region is largely inaccessible by road and is controlled by militias.