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Sudan set for historic vote, security tight
Reuters - Sunday, April 11
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By Andrew Heavens and Opheera McDoom
KHARTOUM - Sudan holds historic multi-party elections Sunday that have been marred already by fraud allegations and will test the fragile unity of a nation divided by decades of civil conflict.
President Omar Hassan al-Bashir will deploy 100,000 police across northern Sudan to guard polling stations and ward off unrest during three days of voting to choose a president, a head of the semi-autonomous south, parliaments and local leaders.
Bashir, who faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for allegedly planning war crimes in the western Darfur region, seems certain to win another four-year term after leading opposition parties pulled out of the race.
"We know that there are no perfect elections, and these polls will not be an exception to that rule," said Abdallah Ahmed Abdallah, a top official at Sudan's electoral commission.
"These elections will not suddenly transform Sudan into a democratic society. That will take time and experience."
Yet opposition groups and activists say even such modest expectations will go unmet as they put forward myriad complaints of vote-rigging and other misdeeds, fuelling doubts about the credibility of Sudan's first multi-party polls in 24 years.
It also raises questions about whether the vote will help or hurt Sudan as it seeks to end years of multiple civil conflicts.
"All that is left is the announcement of victory, which will be the grave of democratic transformation with the support and the participation of the international and regional community," Sudanese civil society group Democracy First said in a statement.
If the polls are seen as illegitimate, it may bode poorly for plans to hold a 2011 referendum on independence for southern Sudan. If next year's vote does not take place, the south may secede anyway.
EXODUS
Streets of the capital Khartoum were unusually quiet, possibly because pre-election tensions may have eased with expectations of a victory for Bashir, who took power in a 1989 coup.
The risk of unrest is greater in western Darfur, where the United Nations estimates 300,000 people have died since 2003 in a humanitarian crisis that Washington has labelled genocide.
There, aid groups moved international and Sudanese staff out of remote areas to the region's three state capitals.
"We're not expecting widespread violence, only things that might blow up in pockets," an aid official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"Everyone is prepared to hibernate if there is any trouble ... People have stocked up their houses with food and water."
Some aid agencies said they moved their staff from other remote areas, like South Kordofan and parts of southern Sudan, where any emergency evacuations would be hampered by poor roads.
According to an internal U.N. memo seen by Reuters, U.N. staff were advised to avoid large gatherings and refrain from field missions during the voting period.
Some of the thousands of Kenyan and Ugandan workers living in Juba, the capital of southern Sudan, paid double the normal ticket price to board buses to leave town.
In Khartoum, bus companies added vehicles as a huge number of residents poured out of the city, some of them fearing possible election reprisals and others simply happy to take advantage of the three-day election to visit home villages.
"I was scared, but now that these guys have withdrawn there's no competition with Bashir," said Khartoum housewife Atouma Hassan.
"So now I'm just waiting for them to announce there's a holiday."
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