Day 2 of Sudan’s election

More great stuff from Deborah:

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.

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Observer thoughts on Sudan’s election

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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Sudan elections on-track

Well, I was 50-50 on whether the elections in Sudan would happen on time. They will, despite a significant boycott by opposition parties. The election is a sham, but at least it is likely to be peaceful. On to the referendum and the subsequent civil war in Southern Sudan.

Sudan’s election is going off the rails

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.

Sudan is sliding closer to civil war

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.