In the wake of last month’s referendum over secession, by the will of near 99% of voters Southern Sudan is set to become its own state.  The democratic nature of this decision to split as well as the Presidency’s respect for the results without further conflict should be subjects to take pride in.  At the same time, the expressed desire positive relations between the states is a hopeful example of the positive impacts of democratic choice.

A great deal more might be said about the separation of Sudan on an international scale.  The situation might be observed in part as an example of clashes over influence and resources between other nations.  On the other hand it might be observed as an example of the ability to change states through diplomacy, development and forms of “soft power” rather than warfare.  For the moment I’d rather focus purely on the issue of statehood, and wish the people of South Sudan luck in their democratic experiment.

Other

In the world of electoral system design, there are advantages and disadvantages to the many types of systems that exist.  It would probably be incorrect to say that any one system is “better” than another, because better is dependent upon what your priorities are.  One of the many advantages of a proportional representation, or PR system, for example, is that it does a relatively good job of ensuring that electors’ votes accurately translate into who is elected with less “wasted votes.” While it may be wrong to say which system is better, however, I don’t think it’s wrong to look at a system and question what its priorities are.  Sudan is a good case in point.  The nation claims to have a parallel system, which includes a significant amount of PR seats, yet the Sudanese have managed to create a PR tier that doesn’t actually deliver any of the advantages the system is designed to provide.

From IFES electionguide:

60 percent of seats are elected by plurality vote in single-member districts. 15 percent of seats are elected under closed-list proportional representation. Multi-member constituencies correspond to states, and the threshold is 4 percent in each. Finally, 25 percent of seats are elected under closed-list proportional representation from lists that may contain only women. Again, the constituencies correspond to states, and the threshold is 4 percent in each.

Let’s take look at this; out of 450 seats, only 15 and 25 percent respectively are PR tiers.  That means there 112 seats for the women’s tier and 67 seats for the standard one.  Then if we further break them down based on states, of which there are 25 in Sudan, it leaves us with an average of 4.48 seats per district for the women’s tier and 2.68 for the regular.  At this point, what is the purpose of the four percent threshold?  Would there be any district large enough where winning a seat wouldn’t automatically give you four percent?  I’m really curious as to the decision making process in this.  Was the threshold put in without thought as to what purpose it is supposed to serve, because somebody was once told that PR systems should have thresholds?  Or is it strategically there to give the illusion that this is a real system?

Unfortunately, Sudan isn’t the only country that wants to obfuscate the realities of its electoral system.  The Philippines, which will be having a general election on May 10, also has a PR, party-list, tier, which is supposed to contain twenty percent of all seats in the Parliament.  Twenty percent isn’t a lot, and it certainly fails to undermine the clientelist system that Filipino reformers are hoping to overcome.  What’s most disturbing about this party-list tier, however, is that parties are awarded one seat for every two percent of the vote received, while being capped at three seats total.  It’s not surprising, that given these rules, the tier is extremely weak, contains a myriad of insignificant parties, and suffers from a drop off in voter participation.  In fact the seats, which were designed to be filled with representatives of sectoral minorities, are often just filled with allies of the country’s elite class, further ensuring that the system in no way meets any of its stated objectives.

Both of these examples are significant, in that they demonstrate the many ways elites can rig or at least bias an election.  None of these flaws are accidents; you have to try really hard to make a system this ineffective.  (When you design a system where the Energy Secretary and son of the President both win seats reserved for the disadvantaged, you know you’ve done something impressive).

The election monitoring industry is extremely focused on what happens on election day, but in reality,  it’s the decisions made long before any votes are cast that really matter.  In his book Beyond Free and Fair, Eric Bjonrland discusses the international community’s failure to address pre-election conditions in Cambodia’s 1998 election, and the ensuing dilemma over whether to legitimate the outcome.  While the democracy assistance community doesn’t make mistakes like Cambodia anymore, I feel we still don’t do enough to assess how the rules of the game affect the outcomes.

This isn’t to say that election day monitoring isn’t important, it certainly is.  We need to keep in mind, however, that in this day and age, only amateurs rig elections on election day, real professionals make sure they know the outcome beforehand.

Other

The best news is the headline figure: total D&G funding is up 25% from FY 2010, rising from $2.6 billion to $3.3 billion. The troubling aspect of this is that programs in Afghanistan account for just a bit over 100% of the increase. Thus, excluding Afghanistan (which accounts for 42% of the total D&G budget), there is a small decrease in total D&G funding. Given the skepticism I have shown about US policy towards Afghanistan, I do not believe this is a good use of scarce D&G funds.

Outside of Afghanistan, however, I am reasonably pleased with the allocation of D&G funds. The bad news continues to be that D&G funding remains concentrated in a very small number of countries. Five countries account for 60% of D&G funds in the FY 2011 request: Afghanistan, Mexico, Pakistan, Iraq, and Sudan. The good news is that, excluding Afghanistan, these are countries where D&G funding could do some good. While I was skeptical about funds for Iraq, Pakistan, and Sudan last year, in retrospect this was a good use of D&G funds as each of these countries has made major progress towards improved governance in the past year. Iraq and Sudan held elections. Even if the results of the former are still disputed and the latter were highly flawed, they represent progress compared to the status quo ante. Moreover, in Iraq, the key figures are using its existing electoral institutions to resolve the election dispute, not going around them. In addition, Pakistan seems to finally be taking the threat the Taliban poses seriously. I also think the funds for Mexico make sense. Most of the money is going towards human security and rule of law programs, designed primarily to defeat the influence of drug gangs. Mexico is a democracy, wants to solve this problem, and is our neighbor. Helping Mexico get a handle on fighting drug cartels thus seems like a good use of D&G money.

I have also changed my opinion on what the overall picture of US D&G funding suggests about how the US Government views these programs. In the past I have talked a lot about the militarization of aid. I don’t think that’s quite accurate, however. Rather, what the budget demonstrates is that the US Government is increasingly prioritizing governance and rule of law programs (especially human security) over democracy ones, such as working with civil society and political parties. This is no surprise as the Obama Administration has made clear that improved governance in weak states is central to current US foreign policy (although I have my doubts about whether the administration can achieve this ambitious objective). It’s also not a bad idea because without security, nothing is sustainable. In addition, while I do not like the idea of US D&G funding going increasingly to security, aligning with the Defense Department’s priorities is probably a good idea from a budgetary point of view because the military tends to get what it wants much more than other parts of the US Government. While this probably will result in a loss of autonomy for USAID and the State Department in D&G programs, budget protection from the Defense Department is a reasonable trade-off, from a bureaucratic politics point of view.

Overall, as I said, I am pleased. My main concern remains Afghanistan. The US will spend $1.3 billion in FY 2011 in D&G programs in Afghanistan, like the massively wasteful RAMP-UP. My fear is that one day Congress will ask the administration to account for these flawed, corruption-inducing programs as part of the broader “who lost Afghanistan” debate and that the blowback will be severe.

Other

Other

Today was supposed to be the final day of polling, but because many polling stations opened late or not at all on the first two days, the government decided to extend voting through Thursday, April 15. I’ll be staying in Juba for the remainder of polling, but will only catch the beginning of counting here.

We saw a lot of the same today as in other days- voters not finding their names on the voters lists, walking for hours from village to village to find their proper station, and the secrecy of the ballot being compromised for some illiterate voters who were helped by party agents and poll workers in casting their ballot. (See photos) The number of people at the polls declined dramatically on the third day, likely because most people who were going to vote had voted already and those who had not just simply could not figure out where to vote.

The enthusiasm observed in previous days in and around the polling station abated noticibly and some voters indicated that they were starting to give up on voting after they had walked to two or three polling centers. When asked if they thought the elections were free and fair, some responded that the National Election Commission had failed them in this election. None of the voters we spoke with said that they believed  that any political party or institution had rigged the election. Independent candidates we spoke with said otherwise, in some cases accusing the SPLM out right of using its control of state institutions to keep a tight grip on the electoral process and intimidate voters. It was reported on Tuesday that two voters killed and one candidate wounded in Unity State in South Sudan. It’s hard to determine whether voters share this view but are afraid to express it, or if they actually mean it when they say they simply disappointed with the government’s ability to carry out a clean process.

Other

At breakfast this morning, we learned that former President Jimmy Carter would be arriving at the Juba International Airport in a few minutes. We drove over to meet him and attended a private press conference, which might have been aired on BBC by now. His remarks reflected the same observations that we’d seen or heard from others- that the logistical difficulties of holding this election resulted in some irregularities. He noted that the 24 year gap since the last election meant that poll workers needed to be trained from scratch, and emphasized the Carter Center’s long term presence in the country. Though I know the Carter Center has observers in South Sudan, we haven’t run into any from that delegation. So far we’ve seen observers from the EU, Arab League, African Union, IGAD, and the Government of Japan. There are also thousands of domestic observers who have been trained by NDI and the Carter Center. Domestic observers are stationary and we’ve seen them in every polling station. Most are very professional and forthcoming with information, though sometimes I got the impression that they were unwilling to speak out on any serious irregularities.

From the airport, we headed out to the polls, this time venturing further outside “central” Juba into some villages. The three polling centers we visited (in the same geographical constituency) had either never opened or opened just for a few hours, only to close again. The polling staff and domestic observers told us that they had the wrong ballot for the geographical constituency seat (a portion of National Assembly seats are elected from geographical regions) and they couldn’t let voters vote for a candidate from a different district. Though it wasn’t clear, it is possible that two entire constituencies were  swapped, which meant either that these two districts never opened or were voting for the wrong candidates. In another case, ballots were printed wrong so that a candidate, who is considered quite popular, was excluded from the ballot and was replaced by a candidate form a different geographical constituency. This polling station was also closed and was waiting for a response by the NEC on how to proceed.

None of the voters we spoke with considered these irregularities to be deliberate, but some of the voters we spoke with said that they wouldn’t consider the elections to be free and fair if they didn’t get to vote. Poll workers said that the election commission would be delivering the correct ballots sometime that day, but didn’t know what time. Most remarkable is that voters camped out at polling stations baking in the sun with children in tow without any water to vote for the first time. While some went home, these people waited in the heat- and believe me it was hot- to vote for the first time, rather than risk missing their opportunity to vote.  The level of frustration was certainly on the rise, but the scene remained calm, likely due to the professionalism of the poll workers and police.

We took a break from polling stations to meet with political parties and candidates to see how they thought the process was going, a luxury of having a 5 day election.  Politicians in South Sudan are quite accessible. We walked into the party headquarters of the SPLM and managed to meet with the campaign manager , who gave us a report of his views on the process. He cited some areas of concern, such as the late opening of polls. We also met with a major independent candidate for a gubernational race who had harsher criticisms. The polling stations we visited in the afternoon were quite orderly and professional, with just about 50% voter turnout for the one we visited for closing.

Towards the end of the day, we learned that polis would be open for an additional two days, through April 15. The greatest concern we’ve seen in the South is the lack of administrative capacity in running these elections, which could potentially open the door up to accusations of fraud. The poll workers were generally very professional, diligent, and helpful, so problem is larger than a matter of training. Most interlocutors did not immediately call the process a sham and voters tended to exercise a remarkable degree of patience. But as they wait longer and longer to vote, it’s likely that this patience will wear thin, which could change in subsequent days.

Other

I’m down in Juba as part of the Cordoba Initiative’s election observation mission. The political climate in South Sudan seems entirely isolated from all of the controversy we saw in the news leading up to Sudan’s national elections. No one seems to care about the presidential race or the last minute boycotts from opposition groups. The people here are overwhelmingly focused on “getting on” with the election so that they can hold the 2011 referendum to secede from the northern government. People seem to complacently accept Bashir’s presidential victory and the SPLM generally dominates most races here.  Based on our meetings with NDI, IRI, IFES, and other groups, the SPLM still enjoys support, mainly for lack of an alternative. In several governor races, independent candidates pose a challenge to the SPLM incumbents, but these independents tend to be former SPLM members who broke split with the party when they did not receive the party nomination. This is the case in Central Equatoria, the state in which I am observing. More on this in my following post. Below is a summary of what we observed on the first day of polling:

Overall, the Juba team found polling April 11, 2010 to be relaxed, calm and enthusiastic. Poll workers appeared to be well trained and diligent, but lacking support from above when materials were not delivered on time when the wrong materials were delivered. The most serious concern raised in the first day was that voters at almost every polling station had difficulty finding their names on the voters list and that a portion of voters may be disenfranchised.

Most of the irregularities observed seemed to stem from the logistical challenges of holding an election for the first time in 24 years. The Juba team observed clear that shortcomings on the logistical end and at the planning level. These weaknesses observed threat to disenfranchise a number of voters if not rectified in the remaining days of polling, but from preliminary observations and interviews were not deemed to deliberate or linked to fraud. The main problem was that some polling stations opened significantly late, or not at all, because the wrong voters lists were distributed. In a related problem, voters had trouble identifying their names on the voters lists for a number of reasons- voters lists were changed at the last minute so voters weren’t voting where they registered and when names were transcribed from Arabic to English the order of their names was changed. Though frustrated, voters seemed to accept these shortcomings because of low administrative expectations; While some voters were clearly disappointed, they still told us that they thought that overall the process would be free and fair.

Some more problematic situations were observed as the day wore on. For example, the Juba team observed an illiterate voter was aided by multiple party agents, poll workers, domestic observers, whose actions could be seen as intimidation/influencing her vote. She voted in plain site (not in a voting booth) and party agents intervened when she almost marked the wrong side. Video footage and photographs available. A polling station in the same center had not opened by 2pm when we left. The materials were delivered late (9:30) and when the poll workers finally put everything together, they realized they had the wrong voter list. They called the responsible authority within NEC, but still had not received a response by the time we left.

Other

Other

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.

Other

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.

Other