Southern Sudan enters final day of referendum on independence

NAIROBI/JUBA - Voters in southern Sudan headed to the polls Saturday on the final day of a week of voting in a landmark referendum on independence for the south.

Surveys at this point — after the turnout had already passed the 60-percent threshold needed to make the vote valid — indicated a clear decision in favour of independence for the region.

Election observers over the past few days had praised the generally peaceful voting, which got underway Jan 9, although violence between two rival tribes in the restive Abyei region had left around 100 people dead.

The referendum is the centrepiece of a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war between the mainly Muslim north and the Christian and Animist south — a conflict that claimed the lives of more than two million southerners and displaced four million more in Africa’s largest nation.

The UN said preliminary results from the vote were expected in early February, but that a final result would be declared either Feb 7 or 14 under the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission’s timeline.