Sudan extends election by 2 days after complaints of difficulties in voting

Sudan extends election by 2 days

KHARTOUM, Sudan — Sudan’s election commission announced Monday it was extending voting by two more days to ensure technical problems will not prevent anyone from participating.

The three-day election had been scheduled to run from Sunday through Tuesday. But Salah Habib, spokesman for the Sudanese National Election Commission, said the final day of voting will now be Thursday.

Sudanese election monitors have complained that voting has not even begun in some parts of the country, including semiautonomous southern Sudan. There are also reports that some voting stations were moved without notice, voter registries or other crucial equipment is missing and observers have not been allowed in to witness the process.

Sudan’s first multiparty elections in a quarter century will determine whether President Omar al-Bashir, under an international indictment for war crimes in Darfur, wins another term. He is expected to win easily after two major parties decided to pull out fully or partially at the last minute.

The vote was supposed to bring a democratically elected government for the impoverished country, prepare the ground for a vital referendum on South Sudan independence and begin healing the wounds of the Darfur conflict. But major opposition parties boycotted it, claiming it was unfair.

In addition to the president, the Sudanese are electing a national parliament, local governors and parliaments and the president of the semiautonomous government of South Sudan.

The elections are supposed to be an essential step in a 2005 peace plan that ended two decades of civil war between the mostly Arab and Muslim north and rebels in the Christian-animist south. The conflict claimed some 2 million lives.

Sudanese hoped the election would begin a process of healing in a country ripped apart by that war and the separate, seven-year conflict in the western Darfur region, which left an estimated 300,000 people dead and millions displaced since 2003.

The opposition has accused the National Election Commission of bias in favor of the government. They also accused the ruling party of using state resources in the campaign and said the number of polling stations nationwide was cut in half from 20,000, making it harder for those in remote villages to vote. They called for a delay in the election, but the government went ahead anyway.

There are 12 candidates for president, including al-Bashir, listed on the ballot, but four of those challengers have said they are boycotting.

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

In Darfur, anti-government rebels called for a boycott of the election because the western region is under a state of emergency and sporadic fighting continues.

Since 2003, the vast arid region has been the scene of a bloody conflict between the Arab-led government in Khartoum and ethnic African rebels.

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Sarah El Deeb reported from Cairo.