KHARTOUM/JUBA – Sudanese politicians said on Tuesday poor logistics were preventing hundreds of thousands of voters from taking part in the country's first full election in 24 years, with some early turnout figures below 10 per cent. Voting began on Sunday and had been due to last three days, but authorities announced a two-day extension until Thursday to allow more time for the complex presidential, legislative and gubernatorial polls in Africa's largest country. The vote seeks to transform the oil producing nation, emerging from decades of civil war, into a democracy, but several major parties announced a boycott on grounds of fraud. The election looks likely to confirm the 21-year rule of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, wanted by the International Criminal Court to face charges of war crimes in Darfur. "The elections (in south Sudan) so far have been a slow process with many pockets of confusion and polling stations facing major obstacles," Anne Itto, a senior member of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), told reporters. South Sudan's heavyweight SPLM sparked a crisis of confidence in the polls this month when it withdrew its presidential candidate, seen as the main contender to Bashir. It is boycotting most of the votes in the north. The former rebels ended more than two decades of north-south civil war by signing a peace deal with Bashir in 2005, and are now part of a tense national coalition government. The elections have been free of violence, a major achievement for a country whose history is full of conflict. On Tuesday an al-Arabiya television cameraman was punched in the face by a police colonel in Khartoum, a staff member said. "We took it to the police and we met two colonels who offered an official apology," said Bassim al-Jamal who was with the cameraman who was attacked. "This was just one crazy man," al-Jamal said of their attacker, adding the cameraman was not injured. Officials and observers said in both the south and north missing names in the electoral register was a major problem. "People are too impatient to walk to seven different locations and not get their names ... In (one area of) Torit town for example, the total number of registered voters was 1,323 but the number of people who voted (on the first day) was 29, only two per cent." Itto listed six other areas where she said the first day's turnout was between three and 10 per cent. The SPLM's boycotting presidential candidate Yasir Arman said his party and opposition groups would hold rallies after the results protesting against government fraud and logistical mix-ups leading to poor turnouts in some states.
