Vote-fixing may undermine Sudan’s ruling party 1
Vote-fixing in an election lacking any credibility has galvanised opposition in the North and may undermine the ruling party. An analysis by Africa Confidential.
A beaming President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir waved his stick triumphantly as his victory was announced in Khartoum on 26 April. Yet the ruling National Congress Party faces a succession of challenges after what many African and Western officials call deeply flawed elections – though mainly in private. The divided and formerly supine Northern opposition now looks determined to continue the struggle triggered by the polls.
The boycott of the elections in the North by much of the opposition was vindicated in the eyes of many independent observers when they saw the extent of the voting fraud by the NCP (aka National Islamic Front, NIF). This means that for both Sudanese and foreigners, such fraud has scuppered any idea that President Omer could claim a popular mandate for his defiance of the International Criminal Court’s warrant to arrest him.
Ghana’s ex-President, John Kufuor, who headed the African Union (AU) monitoring team, made emollient public statements about the polls but in a closed-door meeting with other monitors, he acknowledged that ‘the irregularities were extremely apparent.’
Perhaps the NCP had hoped that by declaring that Field Marshal Omer had won 68.24% in the presidential vote, it might look reasonable in comparison with Salva Kiir Mayardit’s 92.99% vote to succeed himself as Southern President, on the face of it a classic dictator’s score. In fact, monitors agree there was far more fraud in the North than the South. Said one Western official of the South: ‘Was there a systematic and deliberate campaign to rig the elections? No. Were there incidents? Yes.’ Unlike the NCP, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) did not need to rig the elections to win them.
In the North, as opposition protests grew, interested governments’ public acceptance of the badly flawed process persisted. Attitudes ranged from enthusiasm from the Arab League, most of whose regimes do not aspire to credible elections; public enthusiasm and private disdain from the AU, amid a retreat in Africa from earlier democratic gains; and detailed but moderate criticism from Western governments, which said they could live with the outcome, which they had expected.
International approval
France, for instance, announced on 27 April that the elections did ‘not meet international standards’ but were a ‘step forward’ towards implementing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), ‘the guarantee of peace and stability in Sudan and the region’. Few in Darfur think they have peace or stability and many in the South fear they won’t have for long, now the NCP has its victory.
One Egyptian diplomat had already made clear to Africa Confidential that his government could live with the expected NCP victory. On the day after his win, Omer flew to meet the President whom the NCP had tried to assassinate in 1995, Mohamed Hosni Mubarak. It summed up the strengths and weaknesses of Egyptian policy.
Cairo is convinced it can contain the NCP’s Islamist operations within Sudan and concentrates its efforts on the deepening dispute over the Nile, where the two uneasy allies are this month pitted against the rest of the Nile Waters Agreement states: Burundi, Congo-Kinshasa, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda – four of them Sudan’s neighbours but none of them Egypt’s.
Egypt is a major influence on Western, especially British, acceptance of NCP rule but this cannot assuage Egyptian fears that an independent South will somehow ‘steal’ the River which is its lifeblood and major strategic concern. Grandiose Egyptian financed and managed wheat-growing projects in the far north of Sudan depend critically on control of the Nile waters for intense irrigation. Egypt appears to be counting on the NCP to prevent Southern independence. Since Khartoum has not even attempted to ‘make unity attractive’ to Southerners as the 2005 CPA requires, this suggests the NCP will seek to undermine the referendum. This is certainly what the SPLM expects and is preparing for, we understand.
Ignoring Darfur
Western governments focus on the referendum at the expense of, on the one hand, the Darfur crisis and, on the other, the national elections and the NCP rigging thereof. As one diplomat explained after the polls, ‘The imperative of national self-determination took priority over the imperatives of democratic transformation.’ Accordingly, the nightmare was that violently contested elections would jeopardise the referendum on Southern independence due in January 2011 and trigger the unravelling of the North-South peace. It is another question, however, whether meek or robust policies towards these elections would affect the NCP’s tactics on the referendum.
Western efforts to placate NCP sensitivities over the elections reached extraordinary levels when the United States Special Envoy to Sudan, F. Scott Gration, attempted to ‘save’ the elections from Sudanese boycotters before voting began at the beginning of April. Citing generalised fraud and the impossibility of free elections in Darfur, the SPLM had announced it would boycott the presidential and Darfur polls. Although the SPLM likes Air Force General (Retired) Gration’s policy emphasis on the South, it strongly opposed his recent revival of the idea of a confederal solution to the North-South relationship. Southerners say it is far too late for that. So he was rebuffed when he asked senior SPLM officials to halt the boycott or otherwise withdraw and support the NCP. Southerners now worry that the ‘Troika’ of Britain, Norway and the USA plus other interested governments will not help them when the NCP concentrates its efforts on undermining the independence referendum.
Northern oppositionists say they have been abandoned by governments which they used to see as allies and which they had hoped might support them in their aspirations for democracy and human rights. In London on 25 April, the two big Northern parties, the National Umma Party and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), held a joint meeting, where angry speakers from the floor denounced the West’s policy on Sudan and its acceptance of the NCP’s fraudulent elections and lack of concern for democratisation.
Such a reaction is rare among Northern Sudanese, who are usually too pro-Western or too polite to make such public criticisms. Expectations of the AU and Arab League were lower. ‘We don’t trust them any more now,’ said Mohamed el Ansari Ali, head of the Umma Party in Britain and Ireland. ‘The AU and Arab League [monitors] used government facilities and this cannot make them independent.’ Such comments are widespread and often couched less politely.
Find here the full analysis by Africa Confidential
Whatever the results are,these elections show how the West holds the Africans in contempt?
What does it mean to say the elections were flawed,deeply flawed but serve the purposes of the CPA?
Jimmy Carter,Scot Gration,the new York Times,name it,but the most severe blow comes from from President Kuofor,an African Statesman,who endorses the elections in public to ctriticise them behind closed doors.
In my view ,and I sincerely hope Iam wrong,this shows a plan in the waiting for the Sudan:the division of the Sudan into two or mat be more countries.