Sudanese opposition reject meeting with Bashir to discuss referendum

July 24, 2010 (KHARTOUM) — A number of opposition parties issued a statement today rejecting an invitation by the Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir to discuss the upcoming referendum in South Sudan scheduled for January 2011.

In less than six months time, people from Sudan’s oil-producing south are due to vote in a referendum on whether they should secede and form Africa’s newest nation — a plebiscite promised under a 2005 accord that ended decades of north-south civil war.

It is widely expected that the Southerners will opt for secession after decades of bitter war that claimed millions of lives and feelings of marginalization by the Arab-Muslim dominated North.

This week Bashir called for a summit with leaders from the major opposition parties that was supposed to be held on Saturday upon his return from Chad where he took part in a regional summit.

The Sudanese head of state met with his two Vice presidents Salva Kiir and Ali Osman Taha today after which it was announced that the meeting was postponed indefinitely and it was not clear when it will take place if ever.
But the Sudanese government denied that the postponement is related to refusal on the part of opposition parties.

Both Bashir and Kiir met with opposition figures separately including Umma party leader Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi, Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Mohamed Osman Al-Mirghani, Popular Congress Party (PCP) chief Hassan Al-Turabi and head of the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) Mohamed Ibrahim Nugud.

The deputy Secretary General of the Sudanese People Liberation Movement (SPLM) Yasir Arman said that the opposition leaders asked that the meeting with Bashir should not be confined to referendum but must also include issues such as Darfur crisis, deteriorating economic conditions of the people, democratic transformation and political freedoms.

Turabi was the only figure to flatly reject the idea of the meeting while Al-Mirghani and Nugud expressed willingness to participate.

The Umma party has also refused to respond to Bashir’s invitation and sources within the party say that the invitation was addressed to Al-Mahdi and not to the Umma party. However, Umma party sources did not rule out Al-Mahdi participating in the meeting in his personal capacity.

Eight smaller political parties today issued a statement accusing the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) headed by Bashir of seeking to stall the referendum or rig its results,

They further said that the NCP wants to create an illusion that he is keen on preserving the country’s unity and wants to other parties to bear with it the consequences of the secession which they described as inevitable.

The opposition parties that signed to the statement called on the NCP to lift the environment of fear and intimidation in order to allow for conducting a genuine dialogue.

They blasted the ruling party saying it has been evading the deliverables of equal citizenship rights without discrimination based on race or religion that would have created a wider opportunity for the choice of unity by Southerners.

“The National Congress Party (NCP) facing these two options [granting equal citizenship rights or secession] will not be able to evade or circumvent them through compromises, generosity, mediation, public relations or bribery through money or [offering] positions” said the statement.

Many observers and opposition figures in Sudan say that the NCP does not want to bear the burden of splitting the country alone and wants other parties to be part of it so that history books do not write down that the Islamist movement which is the ideological base of the ruling party, allowed for separation of Sudan.

Many international and regional powers are privately opposed to the idea of a separate state in the South for fear that wit will not be a sustainable one which could trigger instability.

(ST)