SUDAN: Election campaigning underway in Khartoum

Record ID: 345335

  • Title: SUDAN: Election campaigning underway in Khartoum
  • Date: 16th February 2010
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) YASIR ARMAN, SPLM PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE SAYING: "We have chosen hope and change because our country is at a cross roads. We have chosen the doctrine because we need a new dawn, a new era... A new Sudan." SPLM SUPPORTERS GREETING YASIR/ FLAGS JOURNALISTS
  • Embargoed: 3rd March 2010 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Sudan
  • Country: Sudan
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA5ST9JQA22BLZ9EUF0NUI20YVP
  • Story Text: Sudan's ruling and opposition parties launch campaigns ahead of the country's first truly multi-party elections in 24 years.
    Campaigning for Sudan's first truly multi-party elections in 24 years began on Saturday (February 13) with President Omar Hassan al-Bashir dancing his trademark jig and mocking the war crimes prosecutor seeking his extradition.
    Waving flags and chanting Islamic slogans, crowds at a Khartoum soccer stadium cheered Bashir as he promised economic development and education under his National Congress Party (NCP), which has dominated Sudan politics for more than 20 years.
    "Our programme is to complete (our) programme -- to change Sudan into an industrial nation ... an agricultural nation. this is a complete developmental program," Bashir told the crowd of mostly young soccer supporters, speaking in a local dialect and accompanied by his wife.
    Introducing Bashir, a Sudanese singer sang odes insulting the International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who last year won an ICC arrest warrant against Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan's Darfur region.
    The presidential and legislative elections, due to be held in April, have already been delayed several times. But if all goes to plan, they will be the oil-producing country's first full, multi-party vote in almost quarter of a century.
    The elections were promised in a 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended more than two decades of civil war between north and south Sudan. They will precede a referendum in the south of the country on independence to be held in January 2011.
    Sudan's former southern rebels launched their campaign on Sunday (February 14) for elections in 24 years, fielding the man likely to be President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's strongest challenger.
    Targeting the country's marginalised millions, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) is campaigning for the presidential and legislative polls in April under the slogan "hope for change".
    Presidential candidate Yasir Arman, who is actually a northerner, stressed the SPLM's appeal to voters of different religions throughout Africa's largest nation.
    "We have chosen hope and change because our country is at a cross roads. We have chosen the doctrine because we need a new dawn, a new era... A new Sudan," said Yasir.
    The SPLM joined Bashir's NCP in an uneasy coalition government after ending 22 years of civil war between the mainly Arab and Muslim north and the south where people are largely Christian or animist.
    SPLM Chairman Salva Kiir left Arman, a lower level figure in the party, to run for the national presidency and instead chose to stand for president of South Sudan, which many analysts believe will vote for secession.
    With the south dominated by the SPLM and composing a quarter of Sudan's electorate, Arman could pose a serious challenge to Bashir who is the favourite, analysts say.
    If no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote, the top two presidential aspirants would face off in May.
    Most of the opposition say they would unite in a second round against Bashir.
    Arman enjoys support in Darfur and the east, but many people in the north worry that there would be a political limbo if the SPLM won the presidency and the south decided to separate.
    Sudan's north-south civil war, fought over ethnicity, ideology, religion and oil, claimed 2 million lives and destabilised much of east Africa.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2011. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register