Healing begins as Sudan goes to polls

SUDANESE began voting this weekend in an election that will decide whether President Omar al-Bashir wins another term despite his indictment on charges he committed war crimes in Darfur.

But voters were left with few alternatives after Mr al-Bashir's main challengers boycotted the race, claiming it was not fair. In addition to the president, the country is also electing a national parliament, local governors and parliaments and president of the semi-autonomous government of South Sudan.

The elections, which continue until tomorrow, are supposed to be an essential step in a 2005 peace plan that ended two decades of a civil war between the north and south, a conflict that claimed some two million lives.

The vote was meant to kick-start a transformation to a democratically elected government that would prepare the ground for a referendum next year on whether southern Sudan forms an independent nation.

There were also hopes that the first multi-party elections in nearly 25 years would begin a process of healing in the impoverished country ripped apart by the north-south civil war and the seven-year conflict in the western region of Darfur, which left an estimated 300,000 dead and millions displaced since 2003.

Mr al-Bashir is expected to win easily after two major parties, including the southerners, decided to pull out fully or partially.

The opposition complained the National Election Commission is biased in favour of the government, the ruling party has used state resources in the campaign and that the number of polling stations nationwide was cut in half from 20,000, making it harder for those in remote villages to vote.

"This is the first time that the party that carried out a coup organises elections," said Sarah Nugdallah, the head of the political bureau of the Umma party, a major northern opposition group which is boycotting. Mr al-Bashir came to power in a 1989 coup.

In the capital Khartoum, early turnout was light and security was tight.

Amal Saleh, a housewife in her 30s voting in Khartoum, said she expects Mr al-Bashir's party to win.

"I am not a ruling party member, but I think it will win," she said. "We know them better than others."

Despite the boycotts, more than 14,000 candidates from 73 different parties were competing. And many of Sudan's 16 million registered voters, especially in the south, had never taken part in multiparty elections before.

"I have never voted in my life. This is my first time to vote and it is a good feeling that Sudan is going back to democracy," South Sudan's president Salva Kiir said after casting his vote in a polling station in the southern capital of Juba. Mr Kiir, who is running unopposed for re-election as South Sudan president, arrived at the poll opening time, but the station had not yet opened and he had to wait outside for nearly an hour before he could cast his ballot.

"I hope that it would be the foundation for future democracy in our country so that power is transferred from person to person by peaceful means," he said.