Sudan sets date for election nominations

Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir addresses the media at Khartoum airport, April 1, 2009 upon arrival from the Arab Summit in Doha. Sudan has set a date for receiving its presidential and parliamentary nominations as the historic elections for the continent’s biggest country nears. REUTERS

By LUCAS BARASAPosted Monday, December 28 2009 at 13:17

Sudan has set a date for receiving its presidential and parliamentary nominations as the historic elections for the continent’s biggest country nears.

The National Election Commission at the weekend said it will receive the nominations for the executive and legislative bodies from January 12 to January 22.

The oil-rich country is to hold the presidential and parliamentary polls from April 5 to April 12, 2010.

A report from Sudanese Embassy in Nairobi said NEC chairman Abil Alier and other commission’s member announced the nomination dates at a press conference at NEC offices.

“Alier welcomed the role being played by the media to make a success the elections process, calling for continuity of the cooperation in the coming period, especially after the conclusion of the registration phase and starting of the nomination phase,” the report, said.

The chairman of the NEC Technical Committee, Al-Hadi Mohamed Ahmed, pointed out that the nomination for the executive positions includes the election of the President of the Republic, the President of the Government of South Sudan and the Governors of the States, while the nomination for the legislative positions includes the membership of the legislative assemblies from the geographical constituencies, women, the Legislative Assembly of South Sudan and the States’ legislative assemblies.

The elections were to mark an end of a transitional period which began when the decades-long Second Sudanese Civil War came to an end in early 2005.

They were to be held from March to April 2009 but delayed due to problems with the preparation of the vote and with national census.

About 69 parties have registered for the election.

The Sudan census results were released in mid-May 2009 but was contested by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army which said Southern Sudanese are a third of Sudan’s total population while the census stated a much smaller number.

It is unknown if the Darfurian amalgamation referendum, due to take place in July 2010, will be pulled back to match the general election.

Observers believe opposition parties will have a difficult time to oust President Omar Bashir’s National Congress Party from power due to their divisions.

The Sudan elections are a cornerstone of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the Government of Sudan and the SPLM/A. Another is the Southern self-determination referendum, scheduled for 2011 at the end of the peace deal’s six-year interim period.

Field Marshal Bashir’s government bowed to pressure from the South to open voter registration centres in three Sub-Saharan states previously left out by the country’s NEC. Sudanese nationals in the Diaspora were able to register from South Africa, Kenya and Uganda. Another centre was also opened in Malaysia bringing the countries identified by NEC for the exercise to 14.

Some victors will be chosen under a first-past-the-post system, others by proportional representation. In a recent report, the Rift Valley Institute noted that the numerous elections and referendums held in Sudan since 1953 “have not so far produced the kind of stable yet dynamic government that the secret ballot is intended to encourage” largely because of “widespread and massive” fraud under authoritarian regimes and lack of necessary resources.

Source:nation.co.ke/

Sudan and Chad agreed to end hostilities - official

December 27, 2009 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan and its neighboring Chad have agreed to end hostilities against each other, said spokesperson of the foreign ministry in Khartoum today.

The Chadian foreign minister Moussa Faki Mahamat, heading a high level security delegation, was this week in Khartoum where he met Sudanese Omer Al-Bashir on Thursday, and held talks with presidential adviser Ghazi Salah Al-Deen Attabani and intelligence chief Mohamed Atta Al-Moula.

Moussa said they had agreed to implement the already signed agreements which deal mainly with the control of joint border and presence of rebel groups in their respective territories.

"Chadian-Sudanese relations will witness a major breakthrough in the coming days," said Sunday Muawiya Osman Khalid Spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who further said that the two countries had agreed to stop all forms of hostilities between the two countries at both the military and the media levels.

Khalid also said they agreed to increase the political engagement between the two countries through exchange visits at the different levels including the border towns.

He also indicated that a Sudanese military delegation would travel to Ndjamena within two weeks to discuss implementation of security and military issues as it is agreed in the signed agreement.

According to a non-aggression pact signed in the Senegalese capital, on the sidelined of the Islamic Conference summit on March 13, 2008, the two countries agreed to deploy a monitoring force to ensure stability on the joint border and to establish a contact group composed of Congo, Eritrea, Gabon, Libya and Senegal.

According to the deal, Chad will supply its own soldiers to patrol its own border, Sudan will supply its own soldiers to patrol its own border, and the peace and security force will become a mechanism for observing the two countries.

According to Dakar agreement, an aerial and satellite surveillance would be used to identify the troops movement across the border.

Speaking to Miraya FM on Sunday, the Chadian Consul in Khartoum Hussein Jeddah said his country would ban the activities of the Sudanese rebels inside its territories in implementation of the signed deals between the two countries.

The diplomat disclosed Sudan had evacuated the Chadian rebels at four hundreds kilometers from the joint border.

During the last four years, Sudan and Chad traded accusation of supporting rebel groups who attacked the two capitals and remain active along the border areas.

Khalid stressed that the recent move between the Chad and Sudan is not tactical or related to Darfur peace process in Doha but rather expresses a strategic issue for the two neighbors that have interdependent interests.

Source:sudantribune.com/

Independence an uncertain draw for Khartoum southerners

Kiir claims southern Sudan gets less than 25 percent of revenues generated by oil produced from its territory




KHARTOUM — Amid wrangling in parliament over an independence referendum for south Sudan, southerners in the capital Khartoum look forward with enthusiasm to secession, but the prospect unsettles some.

There are about 520,000 south Sudanese -- mostly Christian -- living in the Muslim north, according to a northern government census. The southern government says the figure is much higher.

This population, most of which fled the south during a 22-year civil war with the Muslim north that ended in a 2005 power-sharing agreement, is at the centre of a dispute that saw southern MPs withdraw from parliament this week.

The ruling northern National Congress Party (NCP) pushed a bill in parliament that allowed diaspora southerners, including those in the north, to cast absentee ballots for the 2011 referendum.

The bill, passed after MPs with the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Movement (SPLM), the ruling party in the south, staged a walk-out in protest, will be resubmitted to parliament on Monday for a second reading.

The NCP says barring southerners in the north from casting ballots would violate Sudan's interim constitution, which allows freedom of travel in the country.

But southern politicians say the measure opens the way to fraud and pressure on voters.

The majority of southerners are still expected to vote for independence, but in Khartoum they view the referendum with a mixture of optimism and apprehension.

Saber Azaria, 21, a student in Khartoum and the son of a northern father and southern mother, said he would be torn by the partition of the country.

"It will be like having one leg here and the other leg there," he said.

Others, conscious of religious and cultural differences with the north, where Islamic sharia law applies, say they belong to the south.

"In Juba (the southern capital) I feel at home. Here I feel as if I'm in a foreign country," said Kwashi James Amum, a young woman preparing to attend mass at a cathedral in Khartoum.

"We have a different culture, language and religion," she said.

Southerners in Khartoum complain of being treated like second-class citizens. "When I look for work, the first question I am asked is: are you Muslim or Christian?" said Gatwech Mueth Bol, a 27-year old university graduate.

"I spent more than 20 years here in Khartoum but we south Sudanese are not considered true Sudanese," said Anthony Gony, 45, a technician.

Southern politicians also claim that Khartoum has failed their region, which sits on lucrative oil reserves.

SPLM leader Salva Kiir said in November that the south receives less than 25 percent of revenues generated by oil produced from its territory, although the 2005 agreement apportioned 50 percent to the southern government.

Others blame Khartoum for a spate of ethnic killings this year mainly in Jonglei state, where they accuse the NCP of arming and backing local tribes, an allegation Khartoum denies.

The violence has led to concern ahead of general elections next year.

Under the referendum bill passed this week, a simple majority of votes in support of independence would suffice.

But some fear a lurch into an uncertain future. Lisa Peter, 21, says she is drawn to an independent south, yet still finds the prospect "terrifying."

Source:AFP

Police investigates suspicious death of Sudanese man in Calgary

Police units on the scene where body was found in an apartment in the 900 block of 38 Street N.E. in the city's Marlborough neighbourhood (Note: not connected to the killing scene for Saturday's death)

Photograph by: Sherri Zickefoose, Calgary Herald

(Calgary AB NSV) - Calgary police are searching for evidence linked to a suspicious death of a Sudanese man on Saturday morning.

Homicide investigators are in the preliminary stages of the investigation and few details can be released at this time. They are waiting for autopsy results.

However, The New Sudan Vision can independently confirm that the victim of Saturday's killing is a Sudanese immigrant, identified as Deng Manyuon (Deng Achol).

NSV understands that Deng left his residence on Friday evening to visit with friends, where they played dominoes.

The last person to see him alive says he and another man drove him off at his residence at around 12 midnight.

The witness said Deng opened his door and told them in Dinka that "You can go now guys. I have arrived."

At approximately 1:25 AM police responded to a domestic complaint, where they found a deceased male lying dead on a roadway near his residence.

Police have not established what transpired in Deng's residence and how the victim's bloody body was found in the snow outside his home.

Deng lived with his wife and his one-year-old son.

Source:newsudanvision.com/