Disputes over voter registration for the country's January referendum have broken out among government partners in Sudan, writes Asmaa El-Husseini Deep differences between the partners in the regime in Sudan are part of the local political landscape, and relations between them have been consistently marred by disputes that have prevented Sudan from becoming a united, stable country over the course of a five-year partnership. Current quarrels are about registration for the country's forthcoming referendum, which is a vital step in deciding the country's future. The southern Sudanese go to the polls on 9 January next year, in order to decide the future of the south and therefore of the country as a whole. The result of the referendum will also have an enormous impact on neighbouring countries and the entire region. The present registration phase in the lead-up to the referendum will determine who is eligible to vote next January. The referendum only requires a 60 per cent turnout of registered voters, and registration is targeting nearly five million southern Sudanese living in north and south Sudan, as well as in neighbouring countries and abroad. The result of the referendum will be decided on a simple majority of votes cast, and this formula has led to disputes between the partners in the present Sudanese government, with both competing to take control of the registration stage. A potentially small number of voters could determine the result of January's referendum. The National Congress Party (NCP), which has been counting on the votes of its southern allies, has expressed surprise at the apparently small number of voters registering for the referendum. The NCP has accused the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) of preventing southerners from registering to vote in the north of the country by exercising pressure, or worse, upon them. NCP leaders say they have documented tens of cases of violations of the registration process, which they intend to present to the country's referendum commission, asking it to take whatever measures are necessary to increase the southerner registration. The NCP has also accused the government in the south of the country of arresting a member of the Committee for the Support of Unity and the Referendum (CSUR), which is headed by Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir. Meanwhile, the SPLM has accused the NCP of seeking to influence southern voters and of intimidating them. If such disputes escalate beyond leadership levels in both camps and reach the rank and file, they could result in huge problems at voter registration offices. As a result of such disputes, the chasm between the two sides has widened further, threatening the timing of the referendum that the partners are negotiating with assistance from the international community. The latter has consistently insisted that the referendum be held on schedule in January 2011. However, the registration phase is not being closely monitored by international groups, which are more focussed on the actual balloting. Such groups have not heeded the lessons of the Sudanese elections in April, during which most accusations of vote-rigging referred to abuses allegedly taking place during the registration process. Opposition groups in both the north and the south of the country say that the ruling NCP in the north and the SPLM in the south exerted strangleholds on voter registration for the April elections, meaning that the outcome of the elections was known in advance. Many believe that similar abuses will occur again in the lead-up to January's referendum, with the international community being ready to accept the results no matter how dubious they are, as happened in the April elections, leading to further complications in an already tense situation. Making matters worse is the fact that the referendum commission and the laws governing voter registration do not specify the ethnicities considered to come from the south. Observers believe that this could lead to mistakes during registration, leading in turn to trouble in border areas between the north and south, as well as in the north itself. Inter-tribal marriages in Sudan mean that physical appearance alone is not enough to judge if someone is originally from the south of the country, and loose definitions of those eligible to register could prevent those with the right to vote from registering, while registering others who do not have the right to vote. The country's referendum law states that anyone above the age of 18 and belonging to a tribe that has lived in the south of the country since 1956, the date of Sudan's independence, or before that date, can vote in the referendum, as can anyone who does not currently reside in the south of the country but belongs to a family that lived in the south either since 1956 or before that date. Anyone not belonging to a southern tribe, but living in the south of the country since 1956, also has the right to vote. A further complication in the run- up to the referendum relates to the short time period in which preparations are being made. A process that should have taken three years is being carried out in a few months. Criticisms by the NCP of the registration process could result in the Party's rejecting the results of the referendum if problems are not resolved, with potentially dire consequences. An NCP official predicted this week that current developments indicate that the referendum may be neither scrupulous nor legitimate. Meanwhile, SPLM officials deny that the Movement has urged or coerced southerners in Khartoum and other northern cities to relocate to the south in order to cast their votes, or to refrain from registering in the north as a precaution against NCP tampering with ballots. The SPLM has consistently voiced concern that the NCP may meddle with ballots cast by southerners in the north. "Why do the Islamists [meaning the NCP] and their supporters think the southerners are idiots or stupid," asked Dink Kog, a SPLM youth leader and journalist. "NCP leaders have been touring registration offices looking for southerners in the north, especially in Khartoum, and have found that no one is registering. Instead of accepting this reality gracefully, and seeking the reasons behind it, they have launched a campaign, accusing various parties of threatening southerners and stopping them from registering. This is their way of not facing up to the real reasons why no one is registering." NCP officials "assume that southerners in the north are idiots who do not know their rights, and that they are victims of pressure from the SPLM. They claim that the SPLM is behind the low numbers of voters registering, which is utterly untrue," Kog said. On the contrary, he added, "the people of the south, especially those living in the north, are well informed about the referendum, even more so than those living in the south itself. This is particularly true among those older than 40 years old, both men and women, as an independent study found one month before the registration began." "Southerners in the north know exactly what they are doing when they abstain from going to registration offices in the north, and their boycott is to be expected. We have seen how the tribes and leaders in the south reach out to people to educate them about the referendum." "We know the tricks the north can play, such as slashing the number of southerners in the north from millions to merely 500,000 for the purposes of the elections, but then inflating the figure to 3.2 million for the purposes of the referendum. The people of the south, not the SPLM, have acted deftly, relying on the symbols of southern society, to abort any move by the NCP to undermine the referendum by registering large numbers of fictitious voters and stuffing ballot boxes," Kog said. "They did this in previous general elections, even according to the Islamists themselves, who admitted that there had been rampant ballot rigging." The NCP was capable of producing lists of fictitious voters and then claiming that all of them had boycotted the referendum, thereby invalidating the vote, Kog said. As a result, southern Sudanese had decided that they should abstain from registering in the north to circumvent any such moves. "If we are unable to travel to the south to register and vote, we will just stay at home or go to work as usual on referendum day and leave our brothers in the south to take care of the issue," Kog said. "Not participating in a place where our votes could be rigged is better than voting under such circumstances. Are southerners being dimwitted in adopting such a strategy, or are they being clever?" "They are being clever, since the ordinary southerner living in the north understands his true interests very well, and he is not likely to pursue any hope of personal gain at the expense of the general interest," Kog concluded.
