Sudan’s ruling party slams election boycott campaign as “anarchist project”

January 31, 2015 (KHARTOUM) – Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party (NCP) described plans by opposition parties to launch a campaign next Wednesday to boycott elections through parallel poll centers as an “anarchist project” which will be rejected by Sudanese people.

The Sudanese opposition alliance of the National Consensus Forces (NCF) said that the campaign will encompass addressing people in commercial markets and places of public gatherings to urge them to boycott the elections.

“Leave” is the slogan picked by NCF for the campaign and people will be using ballot papers with “I am boycotting” written on them.

But the NCP spokesperson Hamed Momtaz told reporters that this campaign is a continuation of failed opposition endeavors that never convinced voters and advised them to do some housecleaning first.

“The people are preparing themselves for exercising their constitutional rights and completing the electoral process in order to reinforce the concepts of peaceful transfer of power and deepen the democratic process,” Momtaz said.

“The only way to rule the country is [through] free competition and resorting to the people and any anti-constitutional action is against the law and a breach of the context of sound political practice, and demonstrates the impotence of the opposition and its isolation and the loss of political direction,” he added.

Momtaz went on to say that the opposition is suffering from internal conflicts and lack the proper approach “which prompted them to plan for the manufacture of this anarchist project to drag the country into discord .. Sudanese people will not allow for this limited thinking and conspiratorial view after they laid the groundwork for building constitutional institutions and began working on their renaissance projects”.

The Sudanese interior minister Esmat Abdel-Rahman last Wednesday warned that police will not allow any attempts to destabilize security or disturb the atmosphere of the elections.

The NCP rejected calls by Sudanese opposition to postpone the general election scheduled for April until after the national dialogue and formation of a transitional government and insists that it is a constitutional requirement that must be met.

For its part, the National Elections Commission (NEC) asserted that it the only body mandated with organizing polls n the country under the constitution and downplayed opposition boycott calls.

The NEC official al-Hadi Mohammed Ahmed told pro-government Sudanese Media Center (SMC) website that there is no legal basis for opposition plan to hold parallel elections.

(ST)