Ali Belail takes the pulse of Sudanese voters at a refugee camp and in Al-Fashir "We will never know the truth," uttered Ahmed Ezz, 30, a Sudanese television producer as we mingled with the people outside Al-Salam refugee camp, one of the many outside Al-Fashir, the capital of North Darfur state. Just a moment before we had asked one of the men who was going in to vote if he lived in the camp. He did not, he answered. Just a moment before that we were talking to one of the elders of the camp who act as unofficial election officials, asking if all those who vote in the camp polling station actually lived there as the law states. Of course they all live in the camp, he said. The pessimism of Ezz, who is originally from Darfur, seems to sum up so much about this region. The vastness of the desert around the camp adds to the disorientation, a small detail in the midst of a seemingly endless desert. But not all is ambiguous. On this, the second day of the elections, the atmosphere at the camp is lively. There is commotion around the board displaying the lists of those registered to vote. The crowd who are mostly women are attempting to queue, each holding a laminated strip with their name and number on it. I ask one of the girls who looks barely 15 (the legal voting age is 18) who she will vote for. She refuses to answer. I ask her age. She does not answer. I persist. She refuses. I give up but as I walk away I ask her again who she will vote for: is it the ruling National Congress Party? She nods her head. The refugee camps in Darfur which reportedly hold between 2-3 million people (depending on the source) were one of the main issues that prompted much of the opposition to boycott the elections. Some estimates put the number of displaced and refugees in North Darfur at 400,000. Accusations that the ruling party will use intimidation and coercion to secure votes in the camps are easy to sense if not verify. People in this camp have come from towns and villages as far as 300 kilometres away, traumatised by the war. They have much to hope for. We were accompanied by a minder from the National Election Commission (NEC) who tried hard to be present at every interview taking place but inevitably failed. His attitude could not be described as intimidating but he was certainly keen that we conduct our interviews- and indeed our visit to the camp with the utmost speed. However, there are signs of dissent. As we were leaving, there was an argument between one of the independent candidates and the NCP agent who was telling him that he was not allowed to be present outside the polling centre. The candidate who knew that the law allowed him to be there was not in the very least inhibited to express himself and promptly gave an interview to one of the TV crews and explained the incident. A truly free and fair election is perhaps not a realistic expectation but it is this kind of dynamic that these elections seemed to generate that many here in Al-Fashir consider to be the real dividend. "We are headed in the right direction", was how Saad Abdullah, a lecturer in media at Al-Fashir University put it. The heavy turnout in Al-Fashir, albeit by mostly NCP supporters, at many of the polling centres on the first day suggests that people are engaging, "people are dreaming again, otherwise you wouldn't have seen these queues", says Hadeel Dinar, a 25-year-old economics graduate. Yet again as in the camp most voters across the city were overwhelmingly women. Though initially slow with some centres opening late, polling was smooth with no reports of any disturbance or violence. Opposition parties have been adamant that fraud is widespread and have accused former US president Carter whose centre is monitoring the elections and US special envoy Scott Gration of attempting to legitimise the ruling party by not speaking out against the alleged fraud. What is evident is that overall turnout seems to have been hit by the boycott of the opposition parties; initial sampling of some polling centres by Al-Arabia news channel here in Al-Fashir suggests that it could be as low as 20 per cent. Perhaps to give more people the chance and because of the delays reported across the country, the NEC announced an extension of two days with voting now due to end on 15 April. The hope amongst many is that in four years time when the next elections are due, the process, the parties, the media and the voters will have matured and consolidated the gains achieved by these elections. But the opposition parties have to improve their game if they want to compete against the NCP machine which does not seem to be taking any chances. On the evening of the second day of polling, in a house near Al-Fashir city centre four young men are sitting sipping tea and talking politics. Two of them are Umma party supporters, one supports the Popular Congress led by Hassan El-Turabi and the fourth has no allegiance but tends towards the left. It is reminiscent of 1986, the last time there were democratic elections in Sudan and political debate was rampant. They are taking stock of the last 20 years, discussing and analysing the evolution of the Islamic movement in Sudan, the pros and cons of the decision to boycott by the opposition, the impact of the last two decades on society. This gathering would have been unimaginable 10 years ago when the regime was at its most oppressive. Now, in Al-Fashir and across the country the Sudanese people seem to be indulging their passion for politics again after years of political stagnation. But as politically sophisticated as they can be, "for the Sudanese, debate can be an end in itself," commented Mohamed Hadi Hannachi, a Tunisian journalist who has covered Sudan many times and is now covering the elections in Al-Fashir. Next year will be another crucial challenge -- or trauma as some are suggesting -- when the south is expected to secede. "That alone is testament to the failure of successive northern governments, their prejudices and inability to act," proclaims Ibrahim Hashem, an Umma party supporter. If he and many more like him from other parties had their way, they would have fought this election even at the risk of losing massively to the NCP. But weak and fragmented opposition parties opted to pull out of the election days before polling began. In the next four years, these parties will not, it seems, have many choices and at least for many here in Darfur, the option of doing nothing is no option at all.
