Constitutional body asks the presidency to agree on Sudan’s elections law
March 24, 2008 (KHARTOUM) — The National Constitutional Review Commission (NCRC) approved 90 per cent of the articles of the elections bill draft. It further referred the disputed articles to the Sudanese presidency to resolve it because of the lack of consensus between the two peace partners.
The points of contention are about how to identify the percentage of geographic constituencies (60% or 40%), and how to calculate the percentage of women representation of 25%. Besides divergence over the number of electoral constituencies, 26 constituencies (as the number of states) or the whole country would be considered as one constituency.
The co-chairman of the NCRC, Abdellah Idriss in a press conference held with the co-chairman, Abel Alier, said that the purpose of lifting the points of contention for the presidency is the need to run the elections in the time fixed by the CPA and the fact that they are not authorized to settle the matter by vote when the two peace partners have different positions.
The SPLM’s deputy secretary general, Yasir Arman, said in a press conference on Saturday that the NCP and the SPLM agreed to allocate 55 % to geographic constituencies and 45% to proportional representation including a women’s list.
Idriss pointed out that the NCRC received a pledge from the President of the Republic, Omer al-Bashir, Monday to give the issue due concern, adding that the Commission would meet the First Vice President in this regard. However he didn’t specify a date to resolve the disputed points.
He affirmed that the draft law prepared by the NCRC settled key issues.
He said that the mixed system, which is applied for the first time in Sudan, is a qualitative leap; in addition to giving women a participation rate of 25%. In this regard, the NCRC has developed controls in the law to ensure the neutrality of the Electoral Commission and adopted enough material in the bill to reduce the phenomenon of corrupt methods besides the control of the election by local and external observers.
He reviewed the approach taken by the committees of the NCRC to achieve national consensus and the meetings held with the various political forces; in addition to the demand formulated by the NCRC to ask them to provide a written point of view on the elections law.
(ST)