SHRO-CAIRO REPORTS

January 3, 2001

A BRIEF REPORT ON THE PRESIDENTIAL AND PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS OF SUDAN

Between December 13th and the 23rd, Sudan witnessed a round of presidential and parliamentary elections that ended with the renewal of a 5-year term of office to general Omer Hassan Al-Bashir who won 86.5% of the 8,351,273 voters as announced by the General Elections Commission (GE C).

The parliamentary elections indicated the winning of the National Congress ruling party candidates with more than 95% of the 270 election constituencies. As the GEC affirmed, the elections were not run in 24 constituencies of the South, the South Eastern, and Eastern Sudan for security reasons.

BACKGROUND

The process of elections does not make by itself a democratic rule. It is not an aim, but rather a significant step towards the achievement of democracy. Because election is a tool of democracy and human rights, it takes more sureties than the mere imposition of ballot boxes or election regulations in the process. Fair and just elections require a number of procedures that should be applied in connection with political, economic, legal, and cultural measures as well.
Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guaranteed the right of citizens to participate in the administration of public affairs. The Article stipulated that the exercise of this right includes the right to participate in the administration of public affairs, either directly, or by freely elected representatives. Every one has the right to compete for the incumbency of public positions. The will of people is the source of government's authority. This is expressed by fair and periodical elections by secretive vote on equal terms for all participants to guarantee the freedom of voting.

It is important to stress that the right to political participation in public affairs must guarantee the exercise of the other rights that are internationally protected. The free election can only be insured by the availability of 10 fundamental rights:
The right to life, human dignity and personal freedoms, the freedom of thought, expression and religious beliefs, peaceful assembly, adjudication before independent, qualified, and fair courts, equality before the law without any discrimination, ownership and labor rights, education and cultural practices, and the participation in public affairs of one's country.
The realities of life in the Sudan show that most of these rights are entirely denied. The rights guaranteed as the regime claims are strictly curtailed. The law of emergency and the other restrictive laws such as security laws and the public order act continue to curtail the public freedoms. The unabated civil war and armed conflict in many parts of the country, in addition to armed ethnic cleavages for shortages of water and land or failures of the local governments virtually nullifies the possibility of enjoying human rights. The major opposition parties were therefore motivated to boycott the most recently processed presidential and parliamentary election.

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the Umma Party, the Communist Party of Sudan (CPS), the Union of the Sudanese African Parties (USAP), and the Popular Congress Party that is led by Dr. Hassan Al-Turabi constituted more than 90% of the popular vote of the North, Added to the Sudan People's Liberation Party (SPLM) that controls most of the South territories, these parties boycotted the election at a time of a most critical need to establish the fair and permanent peace, stability, and national consensus for the whole country. The election, as such, was nothing but a desperate attempt to enforce the prevailing illegitimate conditions of the country since the 30th of June 1989.
Under this large boycott of the election process, the authority was unable to make election in more than 35% of the Sudanese territories that the Opposition completely controls in the South, Southern Kordofan, Nuba Mountains, Ingessana Hills, the Blue Nile, and Eastern Sudan. Additionally, the civil war, drought, famine, and the other catastrophes displaced more than 4 million citizens in appalling conditions. Many other millions migrated outside Sudan to escape the persecution policies of the government.

The GEC informed that only 107,393 Sudanese emigrants participated in the election. The GEC announcement that 65.5% of the voters whose total population was estimated as 12 millions participated in the December elections was unacceptable. According to SHRO sources inside Sudan the vote percentage did not exceed 7% of the eligible vote.
The negative impact of the election is clearly evident as the GBE endorsed the unanimous winning of 20% (before the voting process actually began) by the Ijma' Al-Sukutti [silent consensus as officially called]. The proportion of the Ijma' Sukuti climbed to more than 35% with the increasing withdrawal of a few competing candidates.

ABUSES OF THE ELECTION PROCESS

As a result of the serious shortcomings of the December 2000 presidential and parliamentary elections, the whole process was severely criticized for these abuses:

• The board of election that supervised over the election was disqualified because it did not have a constitutional mandate. Article 128 (1) of the existing constitution rendered the GEC responsible for the president of the republic and the national council (the parliament) for its performance. Since the president of the republic had formally dissolved the national council on December 12, 1999, the establishment of the GEC was constitutionally flawed.
• The other statutory power of the GEC was drawn upon the president of the republic who also was the chairperson and only candidate of the National Congress Party in the election. The performance of the GEC in the December elections was, hence, reasonably doubtful.
• In violation of Section 21 of the election law that required a public employee who became a candidate to resign the office to insure fair competition to all candidates, the candidate of the ruling party unlawfully maintained his position as commander-in-chief of the Sudanese Armed Forces.
• The election process was widely abused by the ministers, governors, province executives, and the other state managers for the interest of the ruling party. The abuses included the wrongful use of State resources. Security and police harassment was exercised at liberty against some candidates or their agents. Some were arrested or dismissed from the election centers. The opponents' campaigns were drastically foiled even by deliberate cuts of electricity or other necessary services.
• The non-insurance of fair opportunities for the candidates was due to the financial defaulting of the candidates or the direct intrusions by the ruling party due to its unchallenged control of the State resources. For example, more than 130 million Sudanese pounds were imposed on each candidate of the presidential election. The voter lists were not made available to the candidates. One of the candidates, Malik Hussain, complained that he was not able to find the voters national register. He estimated the cost of obtaining the register as 6 million dinars (a dinar is equal to 10 Sudanese pounds).
• The exercise of the unlawful acts of intimidation, blackmailing, and temptation forced many competing candidates to withdraw their candidacy for the ruling party counterparts. In one case, a candidate in the National Capitol submitted a complaint against leaders of the ruling party who asked him to withdraw from election but did not fulfill promises to reward him for the withdrawal that enabled their candidate to win.
• The authorities disposed of the election tasks in many remote areas instead of the GBE. The occurrence of these violations led to the suspension of the election of the Aliyab constituency in the Lakes State of Southern Sudan. Since the Lakes State has been controlled by the SPLM, the government officials were only able to move within the capital city of the State.
• The voter registers were largely defaulted. They did not include the names of many voters in different constituencies. In the fifth day of the elections, the GEC allowed the heads of the election committees to amend the election registers "to check over the voting names," as GEC unconvincingly claimed. This opened the door for many fraudulent acts. In many cases, the candidates were not informed of the changes made in the registers during the election process.
• The ruling party officials acted with mischief in the election centers. They canceled many names from the registers to prevent voters from participation in the elections. They permitted other voters to vote without asking for their identity cards, as required by the election rules. They marked many ballots for the interest of their own candidates, before they took them to the voters. They offered more than one ballot to some voters. This latter abuse was widely exercised in remote areas in the South where the ruling party candidates won the constituencies of Wau and Raja with votes that much exceeded the census population of these cities.
• The rigging of election was intensively exercised in center No. 3 and the Omdurman constituency No. 17. The board left the ballot boxes either unlocked or non-stamped. In other cases, the election officer, for example in Al-Maseed center to the south of Khartoum, asked the voters to vote with pencils. That act clearly indicated his plan to rig the election.
• There was a serious lacking in the security status of many election centers. Four persons were killed by gunfire and others were wounded in an armed conflict at the city of Sodarri in Northern Kordofan. In another case, armed highwaymen rubbed a candidate from the 30 million pounds of his election campaign.
• Many army trucks carried army regulars to vote in centers at which they were not eligible to vote.
• The presidential candidates were absent from most of the election centers that included in total more than 100,000 centers. The candidates acted with poor supervision over the election process. The rural centers, however, registered a higher rate of voting than the urban centers did.
• The general board of election and the election committees did not abide by the election as scheduled. The board unlawfully extended the time allowed for two candidates to complete their candidacy. In a number of centers, the election officials extended the time allowed for the election process after it was formally closed (at 11 p.m.) in the interest of the ruling party.