Sudan president visits southern capital as voters await independence poll result
Omar al-Bashir has pledged to abide by result of Sunday’s referendum in south, where he is deeply unpopular
Xan Rice in Juba
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 4 January 2011 07.26 GMT
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Southern Sudanese fly the flag of independence at a march in support of secession in Juba. Photograph: STR/Reuters
Sudan’s president Omar al-Bashir will today make a much-anticipated visit to the southern capital Juba where voters are seeking reassurance that he will respect the outcome of Sunday’s independence referendum.
Bashir, for whom feeling in southern Sudan ranges from mistrust to loathing, is strongly opposed to breaking up the country – the inevitable outcome if the poll is free and fair. While he has pledged in recent weeks to abide by the result, the memory of decades of war and failed promises by the Arab government in the north mean few people here take him at his word.
“We can only speculate that by coming here he is trying to allay the fears of voters,” said Moyiga Nduru, head of the Juba-run News Agency of Southern Sudan.
The referendum is the culmination of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, signed in 2005 between Bashir and John Garang, the late leader of the rebel Southern People’s Liberation Army, that ended a two-decade war. While the people of southern Sudan were promised the option of secession, many in the north hoped that in the ensuing six years unity could be presented as a better option.
But that was always going to be unlikely. For months residents have been counting down the days, hours and minutes to the vote with the help of a huge clock in the centre of the city’s main roundabout. A banner to the side advocates secession “to end slavery and underdevelopment”.
Emblazoned on giant posters, flyers and stickers across town are words like freedom, dignity, justice, and separation. “Unity”, the option that will be represented as a pair of clasped hands on the ballot paper, is scarcely mentioned.
“It has to be this,” said Sayyeed Loro, a hotel worker, holding up an open hand – the symbol of secession – and then waving it. “We are saying bye-bye.”
A few months ago it appeared that any farewells might have to be postponed, giving the delays in preparations. But yesterday, Justice Chan Reec Madut, the deputy chairman of the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission and the head of the commission’s southern bureau, said ballot papers had been delivered to voting centres in all but two states, which would receive theirs by Tuesday at the latest. He announced that 3,930,016 people had registered to vote in the seven-day poll, 51% of them women. “We are really 100% prepared for the great day,” he said.