by SAVO HELETA
Elections in Sudan need to be postponed until after the 2011 referendum or simplified and held only for executive positions at this time.
Sudan’s first multi-party elections in over two decades are planned for 11 April 2010. As stipulated in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended the north-south conflict, the elections would give a chance to Sudanese to freely choose their own representatives for the first time since 1986.
The elected officials would then be able to work on making unity of the country attractive to the southerners who will vote in the self-determination referendum in January 2011 whether to remain in a united Sudan or form an independent country.
When the CPA was signed in January 2005, the elections were planned to take place in 2008 or no later than July 2009. That would give the people in Sudan between two and three years to experience the life under some form of democratic and representative rule.
With the elections now scheduled for April 2010, almost at the end of the CPA interim period and less than a year before the southern referendum, one must ask whether the complex and expensive elections are necessary at all. If Sudan proceeds with the elections, can they be free, fair, and credible? Will the elections lead to pluralism and democracy or plunge the country into post-election instability and chaos?
Can the Elections be Free, Fair, and Credible?
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