| Submit your comments on this article |
| Africa Horn |
| Sudan opposition parties join election boycott |
| 2010-04-02 |
| Sudan's main opposition parties have withdrawn from presidential elections, a senior member of one of the groups said on Thursday, a move that could wreck the looming vote and damage a faltering peace process. "On the level of the candidates of the Presidency of the Republic, most of them (Sudan's opposition groups) decided to withdraw," said Mohamed Zaki, head of office for Sadeq al-Mahdi, leader of the opposition Umma party. Zaki said only five independents and representatives of smaller parties were still in the race against incumbent President Omar Hassan al-Bashir in the oil-producing state. Zaki said there was still a chance the main opposition candidates would review their decision if the government agreed to an overhaul of the country's National Elections Commission, and responded to their complaints of widespread fraud. Sudan's presidential and legislative elections, due in less than two weeks, are central to the implementation of a 2005 peace accord that ended more than two decades of north-south civil war. Thursday's announcement came a day after south Sudan's leading party, the former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), withdrew its candidate, Yasser Arman, from the presidential poll, in protest against electoral irregularities and insecurity in Sudan's western Darfur region. |
| Posted by:Fred |