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Controversy continues in Sudan's general elections

Xinhua, April 17, 2015 Adjust font size:

After the voting process in Sudan's presidential and legislative polls closed on Friday, controversy continued regarding the turnout rates.

The ruling National Congress Party (NCP) said the government was satisfied about the number of voters who headed to the polling stations to cast their votes.

"We can confirm that we are satisfied about the people's participation. For those who are talking about low turnout, we believe they are not aware of what is happening or deliberately intending to talk about low participation," Ibrahim Ghandour, NCP Deputy Chairman, told reporters.

On the contrary, two major Sudanese political parties believed that the "low turnout" in the elections almost reached boycotting limit.

Ibrahim Al-Sheikh, Chairman of the Sudanese Congress Party, said in a statement on Friday that "the elections days elapsed and the response of the Sudanese people was shocking to the government where the people refused to go to cast their votes."

Sudan's Unified Unionist Party said in a statement "the Sudanese people exercised a noble silence and rejected the elections, giving the first lesson in the coming revolution against the system."

It added that the party urged the citizens to boycott the elections, noting that the party was confident that the citizens would not vote.

In the meantime, the registered voters around the country amounted to about 13.6 million, but according to observers, the polling stations during the voting process have not witnessed intensive turnout.

In this connection, the Head of the African Union Observation Mission for Sudan elections and the former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, said he believed only one third of the registered voters cast their votes.

"I believe 30-35 percent of the voters cast their votes," local Sudanese media Friday quoted Obasanjo as saying, attributing that to the opposition's call for boycotting the elections or the voters' feeling that there was no real electoral competition.

The commission has not yet provided any statistics on the turnout rates, where the NEC spokesman said at a press conference Thursday that "we cannot give any figures on the turnout rates at the moment until we receive them from all our higher committees in all Sudan states."

On Friday, the vote counting started in most of Sudanese states. It is expected that incumbent President Omar al-Bashir would win an re-election.

A total of 1,072 candidates ran running for seats at the national parliament and 2,235 others for the state legislative seats.

Regional organizations such as the African Union, the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development in Africa and the Arab League monitored the elections. Some countries, including China, Russia and Nigeria in addition to seven neighboring countries and 210 Sudanese organizations also separately monitored the polls.

The final results of the elections are scheduled to be announced on April 27. Endit