Deborah Brown, an MA student in the Democracy and Governance Program at Georgetown, is in Juba, Sudan as an election monitor. She emailed me her thoughts on what she has seen thus far — pix later.

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The SPLM and all other opposition parties are threatening to boycott Sudan’s upcoming presidential election. It appears the SPLM – the largest opposition party and the party that has wide-spread support in the south – has decided not to contest the presidential election in return for guarantees that President Bashir will hold the referendum on independence for southern Sudan on time next January. The best intelligence I have been able to gather from people working on Sudan for the US government is that the smaller opposition parties are boycotting the election to undermine the deal. The smaller opposition parties are annoyed because the SPLM was the leader of the opposition and feel that the SPLM stabbed them in the back by agreeing to drop out of the presidential race. By forcing Bashir to stand unopposed, these parties can make it very tough for the international community to say the election was anything close to credible, thus making Bashir look bad and threatening the referendum which is to occur after the election.

The US Envoy to Sudan, Scott Gratian, is in Sudan attempting to “salvage the country’s troubled election process.” However, it’s not clear what he can do as these parties at the moment have little to gain by legitimizing an election that falls far, far short of anything approaching free and fair.

Hope for the best and prepare for the worst is a good rule of thumb. It seems the USG spent a lot of time focusing on the former and far less on the latter.

Texas in Africa picks up on an article in the Independent by Daniel Howden describing the difficulties – including intimidation and violence – that Rwanda’s Green Party* faces in attempting to register for this year’s elections.  Pres. Kagame has openly warned the leader of another opposition party that she could be prosecuted under Rwanda’s anti-genocide laws, which Howden says are used more often as a bureaucratic blockade than a tool for securing peace.

I like Texas in Africa’s post also for the nice job of explaining some of the staples of democracy/governance studies – consolidated democracies, semi-authoritarian regimes – and how we can apply them to Rwanda.  The shenanigans described above make it the latter, rather than the former.

The comments also include an interesting discussion about whether or not banning specific parties – Communist, Nazi – make a country less consolidated.

* Ironically, Rwanda is also the host of this year’s UN World Environment Day.

ABC news has released a public opinion poll from Afghanistan that claims to be a nation-wide random sample. I am extremely suspicious of the results. In the first place, how does one conduct a nation-wide random sample in Afghanistan when the Taliban has control over large parts of the country? Second, many of the findings are hard to believe:

• About 70% think Afghanistan in going in the right direction.
• Hamid Karzai’s approval rating is about 70%, even though he got less than 50% of the vote in the first round of last August’s election and was found guilty of massive vote rigging.
• 75% are satisfied with the outcome of the election, even though 60% believe there was fraud.

That 70% think the country is going in the right direction and approve of Karzai is hard to believe. The news from Afghanistan strengthens my suspicion:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s second attempt to form a cabinet has raised concerns of a return to patronage politics with a batch of largely unknown figures who appear to come with useful connections.

Analysts said many of the new names submitted Saturday for parliament’s approval — to replace 17 nominees rejected by lawmakers earlier this month — have little or no experience in government, raising the risk of failure.

Karzai is battling to form a functioning government and end a political crisis in the war-ravaged nation that has dragged on since he was returned to power in a fraud-tainted presidential election in August.

It’s hard to accept that 70% of Afghans approve of Karzai and think the country s going in the right direction if “Karzai is battling to form a functioning government and end a political crisis in the war-ravaged nation.”

The responses about the election also are hard to accept. 75% of the respondents claim to be happy with the outcome of the election. Karzai probably got about 50% of the vote in the first round of the elections. If 75% of the people are happy with the election outcome, this means that a large part of the 50% of Afghans who did not vote for Karzai and/or a large part of those who did not vote are happy with the election outcome, even though most people think he rigged the election. Certainly this is plausible, but I am suspicious.

Oxfam released a bracing report on Sudan’s decent into violence:

2009 was an extremely violent year for southerners: more than 2,500 people were killed and 350,000 fled their homes. This is a higher toll than currently reported in Darfur…

The violence stems from multiple and sometimes overlapping sources. Tensions between northern and southern Sudan, including over CPA implementation, have resulted in clashes within joint north–south military units. Competition over natural resources combined with widespread ownership of small arms is fuelling violence between southern Sudan’s many tribes.

The Sudanese Government and representatives of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement say the report exaggerates the tensions in southern Sudan. Recent events suggest otherwise. While the cause of recent spike in violence is not entirely clear, according to the BBC,

Southern politicians accuse President Omar al-Bashir’s allies of arming rival groups in the south to stoke up trouble.

They say Mr Bashir wants to destabilise the region to sabotage a national election planned for April, and a referendum on southern independence the following year.

I think it would be a good idea to confirm whether this is true before the election.

Pessimistic prognosis on Sudan:

President Omar al Bashir’s government has failed to pass key democratic reforms promised by the Agreement, and without these reforms, there is no way the results of the elections will be accepted and offer a milestone for the peace process.

On the contrary, fraudulent elections engineered to strengthen Bashir’s National Congress Party (NCP), close the doors to political negotiations in Darfur and undermine the southern-based Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) both in the South and in national institutions.

A sham poll would most likely lead to a new escalation of violence in Darfur and compromise the holding of the referendum. And if the referendum does not go ahead on schedule, the South will probably declare unilateral independence, plunging. Sudan back into civil war.

Election observers from the Carter Center are concerned.  I guess they should be concerned, but it seems to me that they are neglecting the nature of the problem.  The BBC has a story today about how the country is going off the rails, focusing on one town in the south, Malakal.  The story quotes Dr. Gabriel Gatwech, one of the town’s residents.  According to Gatwech, “Northern and Southern Sudanese cannot live peacefully together. There is a total lack of trust.”  This seems to me to get closer to the problem and holding elections under these conditions is a terrible idea.  Upton Sinclair once said “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.”  If your job is to run elections in Sudan, I suspect it’s difficult to understand how bad of an idea it is to hold them under these conditions.

The International Crisis Group has just released a frightening report on Sudan

Sudan is sliding towards violent breakup…Both parties want elections for the wrong reasons. The National Congress Party (NCP) wants votes in April 2010 that would allow it to regain the political legitimacy it needs both to protect President Bashir against the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant and to be in a stronger position to declare a state of emergency if needed, including in the event of a new war. The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) is concerned that derailed elections might jeopardize its overriding goal of holding the referendum [on independence for southern Sudan] on schedule. It threatens to declare unilateral independence if pushed to accept a referendum postponement…

It is essential to move rapidly on a number of fronts, including to negotiate a Darfur peace agreement that allows all Darfuris to vote in national elections; to implement legal reforms necessary for a free and fair national election process; and to agree on the commissions for the South’s self-determination referendum…Time is also required to negotiate a framework for the negotiations over how two highly interdependent states will relate to each other…These processes require strong, united international facilitation, as well as support from other major political forces in Sudan…

If implementation again lags badly, it will be necessary to concentrate on achieving the minimum essential to prevent return to deadly chaos: namely ensuring that the South’s referendum is held on schedule, with a day-after arrangement is in place.

It is quite ridiculous to believe that international negotiators can solve all of these issues in four months.  Thus, we need “to concentrate on achieving the minimum essential to prevent return to deadly chaos.” I had a long talk with someone who works on Sudan, and asked whether the US government was rethinking its strategy and calling to postpone the election.  The answer, sadly but predictably, was no.  I guess we have learned nothing from Afghanistan and Iraq, so let me make this clear: holding an election when we think it will cause a civil war is not a good idea.