Millions start voting in South Sudan independence poll

[The_Emperior5]

well thats how the west see things muslim killing muslims ciid juq u leh ma jirto but when its Christian and Muslim , the west is out there to help and thats jus the way it is.

Well if that is how it is, then we agree that Somaliland wont see any recognition soon.

In the near future i am sure recogntion sooner or later will come for our country because my people are very determine to get what they want and eventually it will come, right now only Egypt is the the biggest obstacle

[The_Emperior5]

lol emperor adika ogaden iyo nfd midna oma daney side , taada ko daran inader. which is not bad thing at all.

i was just explaining waryaa, where you're coming from.

Loool koley walalahay nfd iyo ogadeniya inay xoroobaan waan la jecelahay waxay is la jecelyihin inay helaan,. ana saso kalle uun baan raba

[Coeus]

Sure according to you

[malakumod]

good luck to the people of south sudan

[The_Emperior5]

Sure according to you

Time will tell my good friend

[Hyperactive]

lol emperor best luck to you. Allah wihi khair ah hana wafijiya.
we mat love some thing that not kghair for us.

[The_Emperior5]

South Sudan referendum starts, Kiir urges for enhanced security

English.news.cn 2011-01-09 13:07:07 FeedbackPrintRSS




Staff members wait at a referendum polling center in Khartoum, capital of Sudan, Jan. 9, 2011. Around four million southern Sudanese began to vote in the referendum on Sunday to decide whether the region should remain united with the north or secede to establish an independent state. (Xinhua/Zhang Chuanqi)




JUBA/KHARTOUM, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- Sudan's southerners began to vote to decide whether the region will remain united with the north or secede to establish an independent state, as a referendum started here on Sunday.

The referendum is a major item in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 2005, which ended a two-decade civil war between north and south Sudan, that left around two million dead.

The vote started at the polling centers in both south and north at 8:00 a.m. local time (5:00 a.m. GMT) and will last till 5:00 p. m. (14:00 GMT).

Salva Kiir Mayardit, First Vice President of Sudan and President of the Government of South Sudan, cast the first ballot in Juba at a polling station at the museum of John Garang, founder of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM).

The security of voting centers must be guaranteed, he said after the voting. "Security forces in the south and north Sudan must make sure the security of the voting."

He noted that the property of the northern Sudanese and foreigners in south Sudan must be protected.

John Kerry, Chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations told Xinhua while he observed the voting process: "I'm very excited. It's very important. I hope it will be a peaceful referendum."

Asked about the controversial issues including border demarcation and the status of the oil-rich Abyei region, Kerry said: "I think the controversial issues can be resolved as we work in good faith."

"The issues can be solved within the six-month transition period," he said.

The voting process will last for seven days to end on Jan. 15, 2011.

The southern Sudanese residing in north and south Sudan and outside Sudan have the right to participate in the referendum where 60 percent of the registered voters should cast their votes for the referendum to be valid.

If the south voted for the independence, Sudan would enter a six-month transition period when the north and south would negotiate on thorny issues including border demarcation, the status of the oil-rich Abyei region, as well as the division of the national debts and oil revenue.

People waited in queue for hundreds of meters for the voting at the polling station at John Garang museum. Voters danced and sang slogans such as "Freedom is burning" ahead of the referendum.

Deng Ayok, a 28-year-old university student who stopped his study in Khartoum, Sudan's capital, and returned to the south in November, led his family to vote at Juba University Sunday morning.

"I hope the referendum can reflect our will and lead to a permanent peace and stability of all Sudanese people," he said. " We had suffered so much during the civil war. We need dignity and human rights in a peaceful and stable land."

However, the first hour of voting registered low turnout at the polling centers in the Sudanese capital Khartoum.

Badr-Eddin Hiraiz, Director of the al-Gerif Shareg polling center in eastern Khartoum, told Xinhua that by 9:00 a.m. local time, only one southern Sudanese voted at this center, the biggest in the capital, with 1,088 registered voters.

"There are many reasons behind this weak turnout, including the wave of cold which hit the capital today, and the fact that most of the southerners work at farms, factories and do other freelance works and therefore it is difficult for them to abandon their work to come to the polling centers," he said.

Hiraiz expected the turnout to increase by midday.

Barnaba Benjamin, the minister of Information and Spokesman of the southern Sudanese government expressed his confidence in an interview with Xinhua on Saturday that the southern Sudanese would vote for the independence of the region in the referendum.

"The southerners will opt for separation and establish an independent state," he said.

He held the successive governments in north Sudan since Sudan's independence in 1956 responsible for failure to boost the emotion for unity among the southern Sudanese citizens.

"Since 1956, the southern Sudanese suffered from war, death, hunger, thirst and lack of development," he said.

However, the leading member of the ruling Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) in southern Sudan affirmed that the emerging southern Sudan state, in case of separation, would not be hostile to north Sudan and it would never seek war.

"The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was basically meant to achieve peace, so separation of south Sudan will never lead to war, " he noted.

"If a south Sudan state is established, it will not be hostile to the north. We are preparing to launch talks to ensure good neighborliness and resolve all outstanding issues through negotiation, dialogue and joint cooperation," he added.

While observers believe the voters would overwhelmingly choose secession, some northern Sudanese people still bear a ray of hope for unity.

"Why separation? We (the north and the south) are one nation. The northerners and the southerners can live together peacefully," 30-year-old Sayed Radi, a mobile shop owner in Khartoum said before the referendum. "The separation of the south will make our country weaker, as we will lose a lot of oil."

The total number of the registered south Sudanese voters amounted to about 4 million, 95 percent of them in south Sudan, about 116,800 in north Sudan and 60,000 in eight overseas countries including Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Australia, the United States, Britain and Canada.

The voting centers in south Sudan amounted to more than 2,600, in addition to about 165 centers in north Sudan states, and some oversea ones.

Around 17,000 local observers together with 1,200 foreign observers are currently monitoring the south Sudan referendum to assess its compliance with the international standards.

[grandpakhalif]

war maxa naga galay bantu christian

[Khalid Ali]

In Many Ways, This Will be the First African State is Here
At its inception, the founding fathers of the OAU agreed that while the colonial borders they inherited from Europeans were unjust, they were better off respecting them; re-mapping the continent would mean centuries-long wars.

As if fate were laughing at the founding fathers, this agreement was first breached just a few hundred kilometres from the very plenary rooms of the OAU halls where it was signed — Eritrea broke away from Ethiopia in 1993.

Now, just to the west of the same capital, another state is about to be born; to the southeast, Somaliland is almost a state apart.

It is an inescapable fix. The Berlin Conference’s ruler-straight lines humiliated Africa by deciding an entire people’s fate.

But Africa came to realise that it was better off accepting those boundaries.

While separatist sentiments burn around the continent, common sense dictates that it is better to remain Nigerian than become Biafran.

Southern Sudan returns to the table the fraught question of who is an African.

While the black populations now widely identified as African (although at inception the term referred to the brown, northern inhabitants) will feel a sense of justice, it leaves them anxious about their own countries.

Intellectually, it is an important separation, for it is the first time a truly African country is being born.

Under a treaty signed to end the country’s first civil war, the first autonomous government ran Southern Sudan from 1972 to 1983, under, incredibly, OAU sponsorship, until president Jaffar al Nimeiry revoked it, which led to the second civil war.

Since decolonisation, right-wing scholars have referred to the African state as counterfeit (leftist scholars generally pretend there is no such a thing as nation).

While this hurt the pride of Africans, it is true if by state one means a self-propelling polity capable of generating its own sovereignty.

With nearly all these countries on the drip, incapable of defending themselves militarily should a nuclear-armed super-state roll in, and unable to generate bonding myths, the African state remains a joke.

Sudan has called the bluff. First, the borders of Sudan will become the first on the continent with naturally defined corners, in contrast to the stacked-box look of the Sahel and the barcode alignment of West Africa. This is truer of the internal identities therein.

But it is more than just land breaking off. Sudan was the one African state in which colour, religion and history intersected most tragically, and hence was prone to breaking up in a way that Botswana isn’t.

[abdisamad3]

war maxa naga galay bantu christian

lol thats what i was thinking.

[ToughGong]

war maxa naga galay bantu christian

lol thats what i was thinking.

Same here actualy

[waryaa]

bro hyper, maxaa iga gidhiish = "i don't give an f" or "why should i care" A guy in Hargeisa got fed up with news and stories about the second world war. At the time the British were recruiting Somali northerners/drafting while the Italians were doing the same in the south. So this gentleman threw one a heck of a poem. An old man who memorized it was saying it this morning. It was like All i remember was london baa gubanaysa maxaa iiga gidhiisha

About sland independence, personally i have no problem with it. I know economists say the larger the domestic market the more benefits for the country. southern somalia will do just fine:
1. more land
2. more population
3. more fertile land
4. more ocean
5- more rivers
6- more women

lol at maxaa iiga gidhiisha. my step mom always says that and the tone is angry every time she says that. lol

waryaa, dont you get it? emperor is for north somalia a k a somalidland iney ka go'ado konfor somalia.

marka he is getting his hope up to get recognition for his case.

[ToughGong]

After the second world war,when Somaliland was still a colony,A British officer asked
the poets in Hargeisa to praise the Victory of the English over Germany.They would be rewarded with a Cashmere shawl (go shaal'ah) a sought after item at that time

Mar hadaan gurigeyga
gidhligaanka gariiriyo
Garnayl loola tageynin
Iglan baa gubanaysa
Maxaa iiga gidhiisha
Gudaha ceelka hargeysa
Weligey. gees uma dhaafin
Bal maxaa laba gaaloo
oo abtirsiimo gudboon
Midkood aan u gumayn
Midna guusha u siin
Maxaa iiga gidhiisha

Gudaha ceelka hargeysa
Waligey gees uma dhaafin
Inta aan wax gasiintiyo
Intaan gaajo ku seexday
Hadii aan isu geeyo
Mala waa isku gow e
Mar haddaan ka gabyay
oon go'aygiina ka qaatay
Maxaa iiga gidhiisha

[sheekh-Farax-zero]

In the near future i am sure recogntion sooner or later will come for our country because my people are very determine to get what they want and eventually it will come, right now only Egypt is the the biggest obstacle

Look at this pathetic Qatlander, Egypt is nothing more than 3rd world poor arab camel focckers, you overrated them, it's America who recognise new
countries, if USA don't want to recognise you, your setuation 'll remain the same , no matter how hard you try.

[Khalid Ali]

Sudan ends first day of referendum on splitting state into two nations
Written by RIA
Jan 09, 2011 at 11:58 AM
Polling stations in Sudan, in which the country may split into two independent countries, closed on Sunday, a RIA Novosti correspondent has reported.

Polling stations in 10 states in Southern Sudan, as well as stations in the north of the country, closed at 14:00 GMT. The Sudanese are voting on a referendum to either remain as a unified state or divide the largest African nation of around 44 million people into two states.

The elections are being monitored by more than 20,000 observers and over 1,000 journalists from around the world.

"Election committees from around the world should study the experience of the Sudanese commission on holding the referendum," the head of Russia's observer delegation, Senator Aslanbek Aslakhanov, told RIA Novosti.

The results of the referendum will be announced at the end of voting, which will end on January 15.

The majority of Southern Sudanese belong to various culture and language tribes, however, most speak Arabic as do their Northern neighbors. The majority of Southerners are voting to gain independence.

Russian Senator Vladimir Zhidkikh, who has participated in over 20 electoral processes around the world, said it would be difficult to complain about the illegitimacy of the elections to the Sudanese governments as everything was well organized.

"The technology in holding the polls does not bring about any doubts, the participants in the referendum have a complete stack of accompanying documents [to the referendum], and the process of voting is clear to even those who cannot read or write," Zhidkikh said.

KHARTOUM, January 9 (RIA Novosti)