Only free and fair
referendum can guarantee a genuinely united Sudan, not coercion
BY: Yong Deng,
CANADA
DEC 28/2009, SSN; The right of people of South Sudan to decide
their political future through an internationally monitored referendum,
which many Southerners consider to be the cornerstone of the CPA, is now
under severe threat. The National Congress Party views the right of
self-determination as a curse and a threat to their model of the Sudan,
the old Sudan. They feel that the people of South Sudan, if given a
chance to exercise their rights in a free and fair referendum, will
overwhelmingly vote to secede.
Hence, they are resolved to undermine the Referendum, either by
legislation or any other means possible. In this short article I will
only concentrate on how the NCP has been trying to use the legislation
to derail the referendum exercise.
First, the NCP was reluctant to enact the South Sudan referendum act
since July 2007, the time stipulated in the CPA implementation
modalities for enacting this act. They hoped to delay the referendum
bill as much as possible. The speaker of the national assembly, Ahmed
Ibrahim Al Tahir told the UN-radio, Miraya FM, early this year that the
referendum bill will be passed only by an elected parliament. That was a
very dangerous view as delaying the referendum bill indefinitely till
election will also result in NCP pushing for a delay in holding the
referendum.
When delay tactics
proved to be utterly unacceptable to the SPLM and the international
community, the NCP accepted to start the negotiation on the bill but
with a new mean in mine to impede the process. They claimed that on
their reading of the CPA, a successful vote for secession is to be made
more difficult than a vote for unity, this rather than a choice between
two equally viable and acceptable electoral options. They assert that a
vote for secession requires 75 percent of votes cast and two-third in
favour of separation. It took almost two years of rigorous negotiation
coupled with US pressure to bring the NCP to accept a minimum of 60% of
votes to legitimize the referendum exercise, and a simple majority for
secession to be granted.
To add more obstacles
to the bill, the NCP insisted that all Southerners who moved to the
North before or during the war should vote in the North. SPLM was
apprehensive about that suggestion because the NCP’s motive is not that
it has all of a sudden turned to care about the right of the Southerners
living in the North, rather they saw this as an available opportunity to
rig the referendum results.
NCP already
disenfranchised these voters in the population census carried out early
this year and it will not hesitate to do so in the referendum. They
undercounted them by the ratio of 4:1. (NGOs put the number of
Southerners living in Khartoum to be over 2 million but the government
put their census number to be 500,000). It seems NCP did not want them
to make a significant number of constituencies in the forthcoming
election.
When pressed why there
was such difference in numbers, Awad Haj Ali, the head of Census claimed
that Southerners were refusing to be counted! It is therefore naive to
think that the outcome of their referendum vote will be a legitimate
representation of their choice. Rather it will be a manipulation by the
NCP to suit its agenda.
It is a hope of all
Southerners all over the world that their views are represented in the
referendum exercise. It is also a wish of SPLM and the Southern parties
that the views of all the Southerners are represented. The number of
Southerners who are living in the neighbouring countries of Uganda,
Kenya, Ethiopia, Congo and Egypt is as large as the number of those in
the North. It is even larger by UN estimate. All those Southerners have
the right to vote wherever they are living if NCP’s provision is the
standard.
However, it can be
very difficult to ensure a free and fair referendum carried out in all
those regions including the North. Southern Sudanese voters can accept a
dawning task of travelling back to their home area to cast their votes
rather than see their votes stolen and their views rigged.
To show good faith to
its peace partner and the new American administration which brokered the
negotiation, the SPLM accepted this dubious provision by the NCP even
though they are aware of how it will affect the referendum exercise.
After all these years of negotiation, the final
agreement was reached, or was rather thought to have been reached, in
the middle of this month. The bill was expected to be passed on 23rd
of December. However, on this fateful day, the people of South Sudan
were again shocked when the NCP decided at the final minute to introduce
another obstacle to the bill in the form of amendment in article 27 (3).
In this article, the NCP asserts that they want a
second category of Southerners living in the North to vote. And
who is included in this category of southerners? All
the people who can claim their roots to a tribe in Southern Sudan even
if they have not been living permanently in South Sudan before or since
1956.
According to
the wording of the bill, “all southern Sudanese whose origins are
traceable to one of the ethnic groups in Southern Sudan, but who are not
permanently and uninterruptedly resident in southern Sudan before or
since the 1st of January 1956.”
Of course
any person in the North, West and East of Sudan can legitimately claim a
Southern origin at one point or another in history. Omar Bashir can
claim a great great grandmother from a Southern ethnicity. Hassan Al
Turabi can claim a great grandfather from Dinka. If the referendum bill
is to passed with this article intact, they are Southerners and
therefore can vote in the Southern Sudan referendum in 2011. It is
because of this fraudulent article that the Southern political parties
and the SPLM boycotted the parliament session.
Sudan
historians can agree that the above mentioned figures truly have
Southern blood in them. All the self-proclaimed Arabs in North Sudan are
hybrids of indigenous Africans (most from the South) and the Arab
immigrants who have interacted and intermarried in the long historical
processes which took place in the riverain Northern Sudan. They can
claim Southern origin but according to the CPA they are not Southerners.
A South Sudanese according to the CPA is a person whose parents or
grandparents were living in the South on January 1, 1956 and thereafter.
As a matter
of facts there were few South Sudanese living in the North before or on
January 1, 1956. Sudan historians and experts like Alex DeWaal and
Douglas Johnson can attest to that fact. There was the infamous policy
of closed District Ordinance in 1920s, 1930s and 1940s which effectively
closed the Southerners off from working and living in the North. In the
few months of 1955 leading to January 1, 1956, only Southern politicians
who represented Southern constituents in the parliament were staying in
the North. All of them and their families came to live in the South
after that.
Despite this
open intention by the NCP to sabotage the outcome of Southern Sudan
referendum, the SPLM still conceded to give this group of Northerners
who claims Southern origin the benefit of the doubt.
What is required of them is that any person who claims an origin
from a Southern ethnicity before 1956 should go back to the South, trace
the location of his or her original tribe and then cast his or her vote
there come 2011.
Therefore,
if Ghazi Salahuddin Atabani or Usman Mohamed Taha claims the origin of
his great grandmother amongst the Toposa tribe of South Sudan, he must
go back to Toposa land in Riwoto, and be confirmed by his local
relatives that he is truly a Southerner. If that condition is not put in
place as an oversight, then all the people in North Sudan will claim
Southern-ness on the referendum day.
As I noted earlier, the aim of the National Congress
party is to abrogate the right of self-determination of the people of
South Sudan, and subsequently the entire CPA. By imposing this article
into the bill despite earlier agreement, the NCP seeks to save their
overall agenda of impeding the implementation of the major component of
the CPA, especially now that the interim period is waning out.
It is difficult to know which of these and other
proposals NCP truly expects to be included in the final referendum bill;
but the sheer number of obstacles the NCP is attempting to create, some
clearly contravening the terms of the CPA, is a sign of its resolve to
block the referendum exercise.
Mr. Yong Deng can be reached at email: yongd2007@yahoo.com
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