News Article by PANA posted on November 18, 2000 at 16:58:45: EST (-5 GMT)
Nimeri to Run for Presidency
Panafrican News Agency
November 15, 2000
Khartoum, Sudan
Former Sudanese President Ga'afar Nimeri has decided to
challenge
incumbent Omar el Bashir in the presidential elections of 23
December.
Nimeri Wednesday told leaders of his party, the Alliance of the
People's
Working Forces, that he was running for the presidency in compliance
with
the wish of the party's membership nation-wide.
"I promise to bear this responsibility with all honesty and dedication,"
he
said.
A popular uprising aided by the military at the last moment in April
1985
ousted Nimeri, who ruled the country from 1969.
He stayed in exile in Egypt until 1999 when he was allowed to return
home
and started the formation of his party.
Nimeri was expected to call at the national elections committee
in
Khartoum Wednesday to submit his papers.
Besides Bashir and Nimeri, two other politicians have applied to run for
the
presidency. These are Malik Hussein, an Islamist with strong affiliations
to
Hassan Turabi, the fomer speaker of parliament, and Samawal
Hussein
Osman Mansour, a tycoon with heavy investments in and outside
the
country.
The country's major political parties that dominated the Sudanese
political
scene since independence from Britain in 1956, namely the
Umma
(nation) and the Democratic Unionist Party, have shunned the
elections,
which they described as a government plot to prolong its stay in
power.
"This is like a football match in which the government is playing
against
itself, doing the refereeing and will in the end declare itself the
winner,"
Umma leader and former prime minister Sadik el Mahdi lamented from
his
exile in Cairo last week.
The Democratic Unionist Party said the government should first lift
the
state of emergency and cancel all freedom- restricting laws before
calling
on other leaders to stand in the elections.