JUBA, Sudan, 14 February 2008 — Sudan’s two main parties are close to agreeing on a draft bill paving the way to historic national elections, but remain split over how votes will be counted, a southern minister said yesterday.
The elections, planned for 2009, were promised as part of a peace deal that ended more than two decades of north-south civil war and are seen as crucial to the long-term stability of the region.
Khartoum’s National Congress Party (NCP) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), which leads southern Sudan, had made strong progress in finalizing draft legislation on how the election would run, said the south’s Minister for Public Service, Awut Deng.
She said they were hoping to reach a final compromise by Sunday, and that Sudan’s National Constitutional Review Commission, dominated by the two parties, had already “passed a large part of the bill.”
But they were still divided on how many of the votes should be counted through proportional representation and how many through a first-past-the-post constituency system. There were also disagreements over how many seats should be reserved for women, and how many votes smaller parties would have to gain before winning a seat.
Meanwhile, Sudan condemned a threat by neighboring Chad on Tuesday to expel around 250,000 Darfuri refugees who have fled to Chad’s eastern deserts because of a five-year conflict in Sudan’s west.
Chad’s prime minister said on Monday the refugee situation was sowing insecurity and raising tension between Chad and Sudan. He called on the international community to relocate them and threatened to expel them if it did not.
“The Chadian announcement violates the laws and charters of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees,” Mohamed Ahmed Al-Aghbash, Sudan’s commissioner of refugees told state news agency SUNA.
