Sudan referendum Voters bribed to stay away from registering

[Coeus]

January 9 next year, Sudan will be going to the ballot to decide whether the South should become an independent state. But even as registration goes on, different parties say there have been efforts to sabotage the exercise. Whereas President Omar al Bashir is being accused of bribing southern Sudanese in the north not to register, Salva Kiir is being blamed for allegedly queueing up 12-year-old adolescents to register and participate in the voting exercise, writes Sunday Monitor’s Badru Mulumba from South Sudan:-

Registration officials force people to pay about $1.5 each before they can be registered. Omar al Bashir’s National Congress Party (NCP), bribes southern Sudanese in the north with up to $600 each to stay away from the registration centres.

And Salva Kiir’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) stuffs Referendum centres with party activists who are registering people as young as 12 years.

One may be forgiven to think the Referendum is falling apart, about to be buried. Scary, too, for those not yet used to the politicking in Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan, and Khartoum, the nation’s capital city, is that these are not mere rumours; they are accusations each party has reported to the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission.
The accusations have puzzled the Commission. The NCP and the SPLM have always traded blame at the slightest opportunity. The intensity, though, this time around is high.

That is not why the accusations are puzzling. Rather, it’s because some of the accusations, unlike before, are unfounded. Also, each party is accusing the other of doing something that is not self serving.
It must be the intensity of the moment. As the country moves to January 9, 2001, the 2005 peace agreement signatories seem to, apparently, believe that it’s important to outshout one another. Probably, it’s security: just in case they feel tempted to reject the Referendum results, each can point to their body of accusations and say, There’s our evidence why we don’t believe in this result.

First to complain was the NCP. Presidential Adviser Nafie Ali Nafie, a senior NCP official, visited the Commission last week with his list of 11 slights by the SPLM. For instance, Nafie claimed identifiers at centres in the north meant to identify eligible voters were fake. For lack of Southern Sudan Identity Cards -- national IDs don’t indicate whether one is a southerner or not – voter identification has fallen onto the shoulders of the chiefs. This, Nafie claimed, was evidence that the SPLM was suppressing the vote.

The following day another group visited the Commission claiming to be the right chiefs and that if they are sidelined they would tell the people not to vote.

It’s true the turnout in the north was poor. By November 22, a week since centres opened in the north only about 20,000 people had registered. The same time in the south, about a million people had registered.

There are three major reasons for the low turnout in the north.
First, many in the north have preferred to come and register and vote in the south. Second, says Chan, voters in the north are scared to register for fear that after the south votes to secede they could be thrown out of the north.

Early warning
One NCP official in August warned southerners in the north that they would lose citizenship in the north in case the country split. President Bashir later dismissed this. But the damage may already have been done. Apparently, southerners in the north would rather not show their hand as southerners for fear of the repercussions.

Third, and perhaps more important is the two parties themselves. “One of the partners is telling people not to come to register,” Justice Chan Reec Madut, the deputy Chairperson of the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission, says.

In fact, a day after the NCP complaints, the SPLM filed its complaints with the Commission. “They are beating people, telling people to stay at home,” Paul Jacob, a director at the Government of Southern Sudan ministry of Information, said at a Press conference in Juba last week.
It’s, however, not in favour of the NCP to have as few people in the north to register; rather it’s in their favour to have as many register in the north – but later appeal to them to stay away from the polling centres.

Registering to vote and failing to cast the ballot could diminish the turnout to below 60 per cent – the minimum number of registered voters for separation to be approved. Under the Referendum law, a voter can only vote at centres where they registered.

The SPLM denies it is involved in voter suppression in the north. Still, SPLM officials say people should think twice about registering if they do not intend to vote. As he turned up to register on the day centres opened, for instance, the Government of Southern Sudan President Salva Kiir told people to turnout in large numbers.

But he also told them that registration is for people who plan to vote.
The lines at the registration centres reflect a desire by the people here to be part of a historical moment, which is certain to lead to Africa’s newest country.

The north and south have been engaged in a conflict for more than half of the past century. As the rest of Africa sought independence, so too, did southern Sudanese, who started seeking a new country for themselves.

No reason exists for the NCP could bribe voters in the north to stay away from registering. “People make statements they can’t prove,” says Paulino Wanawilla Unango, a member of the Commission, referring to reports in the north that the NCP was bribing voters to stay away. “We asked them, ‘Who among you has received an offer of money?’ Nobody.”

Also, it’s not true that the SPLM has suppressed the vote in the north; they lack the machinery to do so. And it’s not in the favour of the SPLM to force 12 year-old minors in the south to register because what if such persons don’t turn out to cast the ballot? It could give unionists victory.