Polls and panic, muddle and political maladjustment lie ahead of next week's Sudanese elections. Sudan is struggling to get a grip, writes Gamal Nkrumah No one should doubt the magnitude of what Sudan is undergoing this week in the lead-up to the 8 April elections. It is make or break as far as the Sudanese political establishment is concerned -- both government and opposition. Further proof of the different rhythms of Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir and the leaders of the main Sudanese opposition parties is that while the government insists on the original date "not a day more and not a day less" as Al-Bashir put it, the opposition are adamant that the elections should be postponed to November. Whoever prevails will seize the opportunity to consolidate their power. Tensions had been brewing in the Sudanese political establishment ever since Sudan's leading Islamist ideologue Hassan Al-Turabi broke ranks with Al-Bashir and founded his own Popular Congress Party (PCP), Sudan's most influential Islamist opposition party. Curiously, all the Sudanese political opposition parties appear to have a lot of cash to spare. Their real objective is not to reduce the majority of President Al-Bashir, but rather to topple his government and run the country in his stead. The problem is that they do not have a coherent, clear programme that is necessary to win votes. As a presidential candidate and a front-runner, President Al-Bashir crafted a platform to address the concerns that preoccupy the large and politically weighty northern Muslim conservative constituency. Still, Al-Bashir is finding himself in unfamiliar territory with the Sudanese opposition. His troubles stem from the opposition, both northern and southern, and the sharp contrast in their pitches. Some Sudanese officials, including Al-Bashir's advisers, urge the president to focus on successfully ending the conflict in Darfur. At the very least, the Sudanese president can now boast that he has settled the Darfur conflict by signing ceasefire agreements with key protagonists. Such an argument reveals something important: either those who signed the agreements do not believe the hype about the Sudanese government's tough talk or they're leading him on. The Sudanese voters are angry, disenchanted and are yearning for real change. They are banking on a new Sudan that will solve its crises with fresh thinkers and an infusion of new political blood in charge. Al-Bashir also faces big decisions on the reconfiguration of Sudan's political system. All manner of excuses are now in circulation as to why the April elections should be postponed. With political ramifications of this magnitude, it is clear to both the Sudanese and their African and Arab neighbours that the future of not only the country but the region is at stake. The result of the Sudanese presidential elections will have tremendous political fallout in the region. Western powers are also looking closely into political developments in Sudan. Perhaps that explains why the coffers of Sudan's political parties are awash. The Sudanese opposition feel they are ill-prepared for such an early election. They purport that their chances of success against the incumbent will be much greater after the rainy season -- June to September. The irony is that it is difficult to organise under the torrential equatorial downpours, which leads observers to believe that there must be another reason. Perhaps, they want enough time to garner Western support. That is not to deny that a victory for Al-Bashir will inevitably have immense political implications for Sudan. He could make political capital out of brandishing the nationalist colours, painting the opposition as Western lackeys which is certain to lose them votes. The real test lies in what follows from Al-Bashir's non- compliance with the opposition's demands. Oddly, he may be helped by the fact that, in the end, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) prevailed upon the Sudanese government to increase the number of seats in the Sudanese National Assembly, which he did. A bone of contention between the Sudanese opposition and the government is whether the country's lawmakers should be elected in constituency contests or by party lists, as often happens now. There is a need for an injection of competition by the wide spectrum of Sudanese political parties with differing agendas and political orientations who want to reach out beyond the ruling party's old Islamist base. The only hope they have is to reduce Al-Bashir's majority, and perhaps in coalition with other disfranchised groups run a new Sudan. The main players are the armed opposition parties in Darfur that have recently signed peace agreements with the Sudanese government. Chief among these is the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), a party that not only signed a peace agreement with the government in Doha, but also has stuck to its guns as far as collaborating closely with Al-Turabi's PCP and other opposition groups are concerned. These opposition groups may be able to compete against the ruling party's electioneering muscle on a national scale. The SPLM, too, understands that this is the only way to make significant political inroads in the Sudanese political set-up. This is a tribute to the JEM dogged search for peace in Darfur. It is not clear which way JEM would sway voters in Darfur, having signed a ceasefire with the government. What they did is to revive peace talks. Indeed, they have pledged more in-depth and sustained talks in the future. Yet the promised dialogue is hardly inspiring. On the eve of the signing of the treaty, Al-Bashir is faced with the latest election conundrum. By focussing on the war of attrition between the Sudanese government and JEM, the Sudanese opposition wishes to deflect the issues at stake. Neither the ear-splitting nor the sanguine arguments of the opposition can be dismissed out of hand. The most important development, widely seen as a splendid triumph for the SPLM, was that the southern Sudanese now have 28 per cent of the seats in the Sudanese National Assembly. This was a major issue between the SPLM and the ruling NCP of Al-Bashir. In a widely publicised "open letter" televised on Monday, the leader of the Umma Party Sadig Al-Mahdi declared that the election of Yassir Arman, presidential candidate of the SPLM would lead to the alienation of many northern Sudanese. Al-Mahdi also warned that the election of Arman as president will inevitably result in social upheaval, widespread protests and a general air of disapproval and disgruntlement in northern Sudan. Al-Mahdi said that his statement was especially aimed at academics, intellectuals, professionals. But what about the Sudanese masses? For his part, Arman stressed that the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) is exerting tremendous efforts behind the scene to rig the forthcoming election results. Arman said that as a coalition partner of the NCP, he has insider information that Al-Bashir's party is determined to produce a fraudulent election in which the SPLM's credibility will hang in the balance if it continues to collaborate closely with its coalition partner. This is a strategy that the SPLM can ill afford. The damning announcement by Arman came soon after the SPLM leader and Sudanese First Vice-President Salva Kiir together with Arman and Sudanese Foreign Minister Deng Alor met with high-profile leaders of the NCP, including President Al-Bashir. Much hinges on the timing and the scope of Sudan's long- awaited general elections in April. It is against this backdrop that the upcoming Sudanese polls, the first multi-party elections in 24 years, promise to change the face of Sudanese politics. The country is also poised to become a leading African oil exporter. The oil find proved to be combustible in certain Sudanese provinces -- Darfur, southern Kordofan, Blue Nile and Abyei. It is in this context that Al-Bashir toured the southern Sudanese region, a vast area the size of Western Europe, to drum up support for his Islamist party. Al-Bashir played down the Islamist card focussing instead on the vital importance of Sudanese territorial unity and sovereignty. The southern Sudanese political parties are consolidating their turf -- many factions are split along tribal, ethnic and linguistic lines. The critical point is who the West, the bleeding-heart aid workers favour. The Democratic Unionist Party headed by Mohamed Othman Al-Mirghani issued a protest memorandum accusing the ruling NCP of spending $33 million in election campaigns. But Al-Bashir is certainly not Washington's blue-eyed boy. JEM brings up its determination to build closer alliances with other Sudanese parties, namely the Popular Congress Party (PCP) of the chief Sudanese Islamist ideologue Sheikh Hassan Al-Turabi. The PCP along with the Umma Party, headed by the last democratically elected prime minister of Sudan toppled in a coup d'état in 1989 by Al-Bashir, signed an election code in the southern Sudanese capital of Juba in February. The SPLM Democratic Change (SPLM-DC) led by former Sudanese foreign minister Lam Akol is widely dismissed as a stooge of Al-Bashir, created two years ago as an attempt to put a spanner in future elections. In a separate but related development, it was disclosed that the SPLM, which effectively runs the government of southern Sudan, detained the leader of the Lam Akol. The incident is typical of the divisions that fracture Sudan.
