Elections highlight southern divisions
Published: 31 May, 2010
Sudan’s first multi-party elections in 24 years have ended with a resounding victory for incumbent Omar al-Bashir’s National Congress Party. The poll has been heavily criticised by the international community, with election monitors at the Carter Center calling the process: “Highly chaotic, non-transparent, and vulnerable to electoral manipulation.” The Centre’s report also highlighted violence and intimidation around the country in the run up to the vote. EU election monitors in the restive Darfur region were withdrawn over safety concerns.
In semi-autonomous Southern Sudan, which is gearing up for a referendum on full independence in 2011, current leader Salva Kiir won 93 percent of the vote. While neither of these national results – nor the methods by which they were attained – were unexpected, the gubernatorial elections that took place simultaneously were demonstrative of the fragile stability in the south, according to Wolfram Lacher, head of the Middle East and North Africa desk at Control Risks.
“In the gubernatorial elections we’ve seen quite serious competition between strongmen, often with quite serious ties to Sudan People’s Liberation Army units or militias, often seeking to represent different ethnic or tribal groups,” Mr Lacher says, highlighting the case of George Athor, a former deputy chief of staff in the SPLA, which fought for independence from the north and whose leadership are, by and large, now the government of the south. Mr Athor ran for governor of Jonglei state, lost, and defected with a large number of soldiers.
“That was the most high profile case of these kinds of tensions, but we could yet see such rifts in other states emerge and spill over into violence,” Mr Lacher says. “At the gubernatorial level the elections in the south have exposed some of the sources of potential instability in a future independent southern state.
“I think generally speaking the political, economic and social preconditions in the south for a stable and effective state after the independence referendum are quite limited. So it’s quite likely that we will be faced with a quite unstable state that has very limited control over large parts of its territory.”
While the referendum remains likely to happen, if not entirely on schedule, Mr Lacher notes that the irregularities in the election in the south and the widespread intimidation of voters could undermine the legitimacy of a referendum vote if such practices are repeated. Central government could find in these tactics an excuse to delay the process of secession or undermine the government of the new state. International actors, too, have placed a significant amount of political capital on the table in trying to move the process along.
Western governments have been pressured by lobby groups and civil society on their support for elections that are seen to legitimise Mr Bashir, the only sitting head of state facing an International Criminal Court arrest warrant. Backtracking, as they did, from insisting on “free and fair” elections – and changing their terminology to “credible” – demonstrated to some observers a level of pragmatism that could undermine the international community’s ability to make moral judgements on the NCP.
