{"id":318600,"date":"2010-02-14T00:28:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-14T05:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16711557.post-2755188563298038513"},"modified":"2010-02-14T00:28:47","modified_gmt":"2010-02-14T05:28:47","slug":"campaigning-for-sudan-vote-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/318600","title":{"rendered":"Campaigning for Sudan Vote Begins"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
The soon to be held Sudan elections will highlight Al-Bashir, right, who will be challenged by Arman, who is counting on the solid support of the south. The oil-rich nation is the largest geographically in Africa. [AFP]<\/a>
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n

Saturday, February 13, 2010
18:14 Mecca time, 15:14 GMT \t <\/p>\n

Campaigning for Sudan vote begins<\/p>\n

Al-Bashir will be challenged by Arman who is counting on the solid support of the south<\/p>\n

Campaigning for Sudan’s forthcoming election has begun, with 12 presidential hopefuls set to challenge Omar al-Bashir, the current president.<\/p>\n

The exercise kicked off on Saturday, paving the way for the first multi-party poll since 1986. Al-Bashir seized power in 1989 in a coup in Africa’s largest country.<\/p>\n

After being pushed back twice, the presidential election is set to take place on April 11, alongside legislative and regional polls.<\/p>\n

A referendum on whether southern Sudan should become independent is expected in 2011.<\/p>\n

Al-Bashir, who seized power with support from conservative Muslim groups, is facing off against 11 other hopefuls.<\/p>\n

They include Fatima Ahmed Abdelmahmud, the first woman ever to aspire to the presidency, and Sadiq al-Mahdi, the two-time former prime minister whom al-Bashir ousted.<\/p>\n

Al-Bashir is the world’s first sitting president facing an international arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of alleged crimes against humanity in Sudan’s western Darfur region.<\/p>\n

Costly conflict<\/p>\n

The UN says up to 300,000 people have died and 2.7 million fled their homes since the ethnic minority rebels in Darfur first rose up against the Arab-dominated Khartoum government in February 2003.<\/p>\n

But the Sudanese government disputes the death toll, saying around 10,000 people have died.<\/p>\n

Al-Bashir’s main challengers are Yasser Arman, a secular Muslim from north Sudan representing the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, and al-Mahdi, the former prime minister from the influential Umma Party.<\/p>\n

Arman, 49, is counting on the solid support of south Sudan, while the 74-year-old Mahdi’s main support base is in the north.<\/p>\n

But in a country without opinion polls and which has not held real elections in decades, the outcome of the polls is wide open.<\/p>\n

Rallies banned<\/p>\n

The opposition fear al-Bashir will use the levers of power, including the security forces, to win the vote.<\/p>\n

Rallies have been banned, but the opposition plans to test the waters during campaigning to try and stage one in Omdurman, the twin city of Khartoum, Sudan’s capital.<\/p>\n

Sudan has emerged from a devastating 22-year civil war that pitted the dominant Muslim and Arab northern Sudanese against the largely non-Muslim, non-Arab southerners.<\/p>\n

A comprehensive peace agreement was signed with the south in 2005, ending the conflict.<\/p>\n

But the most basic services are lacking in much of the remote and underdeveloped regions of Sudan, which has 41 million people.<\/p>\n

Source: \tAgencies
<\/p>\n

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The soon to be held Sudan elections will highlight Al-Bashir, right, who will be challenged by Arman, who is counting on the solid support of the south. The oil-rich nation is the largest geographically in Africa. [AFP]Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos Saturday, February 13, 201018:14 Mecca time, 15:14 GMT Campaigning for Sudan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4243,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-318600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4243"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318600\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}