News Article by AFP posted on December 08, 2000 at 13:23:34: EST (-5 GMT)
Sudan's Beshir set to win reelection amid massive opposition boycott
by Peter King
CAIRO, Dec 8 (AFP) - The Sudanese start voting Monday in
elections
that diplomats and the opposition say are certain to keep
President Omar
al-Beshir and his ruling party in power a year after
he purged his political
rivals.
Beshir has said the legislative elections, running
simultaneously with
those for president, are designed to fill the
vacuum he created when he
dissolved parliament and imposed a state
of emergency in December 1999.
But the opposition, which is boycotting a ballot organised by
the
"totalitarian regime," complains that Beshir simply wants to
extend his rule
and put the opposition in a weaker position to
negotiate an end to years of
civil war.
"He's insistent on ruling indefinitely," a source from the
opposition Umma
party told AFP, arguing that Beshir did not give the
opposition enough time
to organise effective campaigns for the
general elections.
The Umma party won the largest block of seats in Sudan's last
freely
contested multi-party elections in 1986. It is one of the
groups boycotting
the December 11-20 vote, along with the umbrella
National Democratic Alliance
(NDA), which includes both northern
opposition movements and southern rebels.
The Umma claims it still commands a large following in Africa's
biggest
country, and observers say the majority of Sudanese support
one of the
numerous opposition groups that are not participating in
the vote.
Also refusing to take part is the Popular National Congress
(PNC) of
Beshir's former ally-turned-rival, Hassan al-Turabi, which
broke away from
the ruling National Congress (NC) party when Beshir
disbanded parliament.
Turabi is the Islamist ideologue who backed the military coup
that brought
Beshir to power in 1989 and overthrew the
democratically elected prime
minister, Sadeq al-Mahdi, now the
leader of the Umma party.
PNC official Mohammed al-Amin Khalifa claims more than half the
members of
the former parliament, dissolved to oust Turabi as
speaker, have now sided
with the PNC and will not be running in the
coming elections.
In addition to the boycott, elections will not take place at all
in
various rebel-held regions around the country and which the Sudan
People's
Liberation Army (SPLA) rebels claim amount to half the
country.
The European Union has also declined to accept an invitation to
monitor
the elections to avoid legitimising the vote, sources close
to the EU said.
In the presidential vote, Beshir is standing against four
competitors.
They include former President Jaafar Nimeiri, who was
ousted by a popular
uprising in 1985, and three little-known
contenders.
But a western diplomat told AFP that Beshir and his party were
so certain
to win that the vote was being regarded as a "farce" and
a "formality."
The diplomat said the elections were aimed at "normalising" the
situation
in Sudan by reviving the dissolved parliament in
preparation for ending the
year-long state of emergency which runs
out at the end of the year.
"After the elections, Beshir will begin negotiations with the
opposition
with a view to holding new elections for parliament that
would be more
democratic, before the end of parliament's term," the
diplomat said, adding
that even SPLA chief John Garang could join
the talks.
The Sudanese president is already in talks with Mahdi, the Umma
leader who
returned to Khartoum last month after four years of
self-imposed exile
demanding constitutional change.
But Beshir has dismissed the possibility of early elections,
saying
recently that the parliament and president elected this month
would run the
full length of their terms in office.
Opposition officials, meanwhile, said Beshir could look to form
a national
unity government, inviting Mahdi and other opposition
parties to join his
cabinet, although Mahdi has ruled out accepting
such an offer.
Twelve million of Sudan's population of around 30 million are
eligible to
vote in the one-person, one-vote elections.
Some 270 of the parliament's 360 deputies will be elected to
represent
Sudan's geographical constituencies in addition to a quota
of 35 seats for
women voters and 26 seats for university graduates.
Sudan's farmers, shepherds, businessmen and trade unions have
already
elected 29 members of parliament designated for them.
Twenty-six ruling party members and two pro-government Muslim
Brotherhood
candidates who stood uncontested in the Khartoum
region's geographical
constituencies have already been declared bed
facto winners.
Voting stations will open on December 11 and remain open until
December
20, or until all eligible voters have cast their
ballots.