SUDAN’S PRESIDENT Omar al-Bashir was yesterday declared the winner of the country’s first multi-party election in 24 years, keeping in office the world’s only head of state wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes.
Observers and opposition parties have complained of fraud in the north of the country and in the semi-autonomous south.
National Election Commission chairman Abel Alier said Mr Bashir won 68 per cent of votes counted. “The winner in the election of the president of the republic is Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir from the National Congress Party,” he said in Khartoum.
Former rebel leader Salva Kiir was re-elected as president of the semi-autonomous south, with a 92.9 per cent share of the southern poll, Mr Alier said. The region is due in eight months’ time to vote in a referendum that could see it secede and become Africa’s newest nation.
“The result is very much as expected,” said John Ashworth, regional representative in the Horn of Africa for non-governmental organisation IKV Pax Christi. “It was clear from the beginning that al-Bashir would win by fair means or foul.
“This wasn’t a simple case of vote-rigging or stuffing ballot boxes. I think if you looked at the census records and registration methods, you’d see that it was planned a long time before.” Before voting began, Mr Bashir’s two main challengers dropped out of the race, giving him an all but certain chance of retaining office.
Yasser Arman, a secular Muslim representing the former rebel southern Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, and Sadiq al-Mahdi of the former ruling Umma party, withdrew after it came out that ballot papers were printed at a state-controlled press.
Some observers say Mr Bashir had been hoping a landslide victory would discredit an arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court in March 2009 for alleged war crimes in Darfur. According to one of his aides, Nafie Ali Nafie, a victory would prove that allegations against him were false.
“The re-election of al-Bashir would show beyond doubt that people are refusing these false accusations, they are undermining it, they are not respecting it, particularly Darfurians,” Mr Nafie told a group of reporters in Khartoum.
The elections, set up under a 2005 peace deal that ended more than two decades of civil war, were purported to help transform Sudan into a democracy ahead of the referendum on secession.
However, according to some observers, the election was always more important for northerners than southerners, who thought it would bring a chance for real change in Africa’s largest country. Southerners, on the other hand, saw it simply as a stepping stone towards the vote on independence.
Tensions were raised over the weekend, with reports of clashes along the north-south border that left 55 dead.