Voting in Sudan’s first elections in over two decades began April 11 and according to reports voting started off a little chaotic at some polling places. The polls are scheduled to close on Tuesday, but the dominant party in South Sudan is calling for a four-day extension.
Despite his stated plan to boycott the election, South Sudan’s president Silva Kiir was out early to vote at his local polling station. Kiir was said to have had to wait 20 minutes for the voting station to open in the southern capital of Juba and then dropped his ballot in the wrong box.
“This is my first time to vote and it is a good beginning that Sudan is going back to democracy. I hope it will be a foundation for future democracy,” said Kiir after voting.
Sunday was the first day of the three-day election and so far police are out in force in Khartoum and there has been a host of delays, some ballot paper mix ups, and names missing from voters’ lists.
Opposition groups and activists have complained of vote-rigging, raising doubts about the credibility of the country’s first multi-party polls in 24 years.
“It’s not going to be a perfect election. There are no such things,” former US President Jimmy Carter told reporters at the Carter Center in Khartoum.
“But if we feel that in the elections the will of the voters has been expressed adequately then that would be the primary judgment we will make.”
This is the precursor to voting on South Sudan’s independence scheduled to take place in January as part of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended a 21-year war between north and south Sudan. The deal established a semi-autonomous government of South Sudan, dominated by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement.
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