SUDAN: Southern Sudan presidential candidate warns against election vote-rigging in final rally

Record ID: 345888

  • Title: SUDAN: Southern Sudan presidential candidate warns against election vote-rigging in final rally
  • Date: 10th April 2010
  • Summary: CHILDREN WAVING SOUTH SUDAN FLAG
  • Embargoed: 25th April 2010 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Sudan
  • Country: Sudan
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA736GOS9KJ2SHECMTK9W0GBCKC
  • Story Text: Salva Kiir ended his campaign for South Sudan president on Friday (April 9) with a rally in the region's capital of Juba, warning southerners to watch out for vote-buying during April 11 poll.
    The elections are a key part of the 2005 north-south peace deal that ended more than 20 years of brutal north-south war and are Sudan's first multi-party ballots for 24 years.
    Under the terms of the agreement southerners will also get a chance in January to choose whether to remain united with northern Sudan or form their own country.
    Hundreds of people attended the event in the mausoleum built after the death of the southern rebel leader John Garang in a helicopter crash only months after the peace deal was signed. After his death Kiir, a senior military leader in the southern movement, was appointed the southern president and is now running for the position again.
    Kiir warned supporters that un-named individuals would try to buy their votes during the elections, which will be the first time most southerners will vote in their lives. The long-running conflict meant that southern turnout was extremely small in previous elections.
    "We know the conditions people are living in. If somebody brings you money this money is being brought during the night and not during the daytime. If it is 200 pounds or 100 pounds it will not be equivalent to your dignity for somebody to give you 200 pounds and take your vote this is an insult a big insult. Treat this money as if it was found on the street. Take all this money but go and vote for the SPLM candidate," Kiir said.
    Relations between the north and south have been bumpy with both sides accusing the other of failing to implement the peace accord. North-south violence has broken out several times including in crucial oil-producing areas.
    Analysts have worried that the elections could worsen tensions between the south's many ethnic groups some of which were pitted against each other during the long north-south conflict. Sudan watchers estimate that inter-tribal violence, often orientated around tit-for-tat cattle raiding, killed as many as 2,500 people last year in a series of bloody attacks by tribal groups of young armed men Kiir also warned southerners to make sure violence does not mar the elections.
    "I need every civilian in southern Sudan, if you are a southerner, or from northern Sudan or from any part of Sudan or are a foreigner coming from outside, I need people to be calm as you were staying before. I don't want these elections to be violent for there to be war or anybody to fight with other people," Kiir said.
    Most analysts believe that southerners will choose to secede from northern Sudan in the January referendum. Although Kiir's party, the former Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) that now leads in the south agreed to promote the cause of unity under the terms of the deal Kiir has made statements in the past that suggest he is a secessionist to the anger of Khartoum's leading National Congress Party (NCP).
    "We have taken five years and in this five years we have seen nothing that can attract the southerners to accept unity. People are saying that the southerners must vote for unity but this is something that is left to you. After the elections we will start the campaign for the referendum, both the NCP and the SPLM and the other political parties," he said.
    Kiir has only one opponent for the southern presidency, Lam Akol, who formed his break-away Sudan People's Liberation Movement for Democratic Change or SPLM-DC last year, causing waves.
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