[Montréal, Québec, Canada 20°C] In a previous post, I write about returning to Southern Sudan, how my first visit only increased my appetite for more. How little I knew about the place then and how much more I want to know about it now. The upcoming all-Sudan general elections that everyone-following-Sudan is talking about, would be the perfect opportunity to return.
These elections are a cornerstone of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army. Another is the Southern self-determination referendum, scheduled for 2011 at the end of the peace deal’s six-year interim period. Both are absolutely dependent on the results of Sudan’s 2008 National Census.
On June 28, 2009, Eric Reeves published General Elections and Southern Self-Determination: At Growing Risk about the serious challenges facing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and Sudan’s ability/desire to hold fair and democratic elections. According to Reeves’ website, he “has spent the past ten years working full-time as a Sudan researcher and analyst, publishing extensively both in the US and internationally.” Even before starting his article, he begins with the statement:
“Increasingly pessimistic assessments of Sudan’s scheduled national elections (February 2010) [recently postponed until April 2010] make clear that the 2011 Self-Determination Referendum is deeply endangered. If the referendum is aborted, or occurs amidst the grim environment in prospect, it will re-ignite country-wide war.”
The paper is divided into sections that detail the various components that effectively compromise the election/referendum process in Sudan: 1) Sudan’s national census; 2) Logistical, technical, and administrative obstacles; 3) Censorship; 4) Khartoum’s efforts to destabilize the south; 4) Elections in Darfur; and 5) US policy towards Khartoum and the elections.
Near the former Abyei Market after May 2008 Crisis that saw heavy fighting between the Sudan Armed Forces and the Sudan People's Liberation Army and displaced up to 100,000 people.
The contested results of Sudan’s 2008 national census, which is the critical first step in determining electoral boundaries and demographic details for resource distribution, have—according to Reeves—”serious anomalies that deserve attention.” The Director of the Census Commission, Awad Haj Ali, has suggested that displaced Southern Sudanese living in the north have been under-counted to 500,000 but may be as many as 1.5 million people. Considering the estimates of four to five million southerners displaced to the north during the war and a May 27 report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center that 2.24 million IDP’s have returned to the South, there could even more southerners uncounted in the census. The government of Sudan’s insistence that the census form not ask the questions of place of birth or origin may have influenced the results.
Other issues include the results for Darfur, which did not include the the internally displaced people in their camps. The increase by 332% in the population of migratory Arab groups in Darfur—who would presumably vote for Sudan’s governing National Islamic Front/National Congress Party (NIF/NCP)— is, according to Government of South Sudan Minister of Presidential Affairs, “the strangest thing” in the results for Darfur that Reeves states is “the most conspicuous anomaly.”
The implications for the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and Southern representation loosing millions of votes in the upcoming elections, could reduce representation of the SPLM in the National Assembly to something approximating 21% that the census classifies as “Southern.” With a percentage below 25 in Sudan’s National Assembly, Southern representatives would no longer have the ability to reject constitutional amendments, which may allow the governing NIF/NCP to use legislative majority to “revoke key elements of the CPA, including the right to self-determination, or to extort an unacceptably high price for it.”
Reeves’ 14-page report reveals the fragility of the peace in Sudan as indicated no only in its first paragraph cited above but also in its last sentence, “On present course, both elections and peace in Sudan are doomed.” I hope for the people in Southern Sudan who I met and who are hoping for a solidified peace to settle in their country that the “growing risk” will be averted.
Interesting article:
- Sudanese Return to be Counted (BBC, April 2008)
