Sudan parties condemn electoral roll violations

KHARTOUM (AFP) – Sudanese parties on Monday condemned abuses in voter registrations for the first multi-party elections in 24 years set for April, calling for the enrolment period to be extended.

"There are violations in the registrations" of voters, said Yasir Arman of former rebels the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM).

"These violations are documented and have been sent to the NEC (National Electoral Commission)," Arman told a news conference.

"One of the biggest violations is that the armed forces and the regular forces ... were given the right to register" to vote in the districts where they work, he said.

Under Sudan's electoral law, citizens are meant to register to vote according to their place of residence and not their place of work, according to the opposition.

"This is a big violation. The regular forces are many and they can affect the balance of power in registration," said Arman. "You cannot register citizens (purely based) on their profession."

The opposition Umma Party said the violation was occurring across Sudan.

The SPLM and National Congress Party (NCP) of President Omar al-Beshir signed a peace agreement in 2005 ending more than two decades of civil war between northern and southern Sudan.

The deal stipulated that Sudan will organise general elections in July this year but they were pushed back to April 2010, and also called for a referendum in January 2011 on self-determination for the south.

Voter registration began on November 1 and is to be completed by the end of the month for the potential 20 million voters.

But the opposition and SPLM have asked the election commission to extend the two-week registration period mainly because of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, expected at the end of the month.

The general elections will be the first in Sudan since 1986, three years before Beshir toppled a democratically elected government in a bloodless military coup, and the fifth since independence in 1956.

Beshir, who has been facing since March an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes in the Darfur region of western Sudan, has pledged free and fair elections.

But the SPLM, who share a unity government with Beshir's NCP, and other opposition parties have threatened a boycott.