Unity state’s Angelina Teny leads in preliminary gubernatorial election results

April 16, 2010 (BENTIU, Unity state) – An independent candidate for gubernatorial position in the oil-rich Unity state is said to be leading by wide margin in preliminary counts as polling centers in the state’s nine counties slowly report in their respective results.

As ballot papers count began on Friday following the closure of polling stations on Thursday, reports from the state’s agents for Angelina Teny told Sudan Tribune that a number of counties that have already submitted results indicated that the independent female candidate is leading by a wide margin against other six contestants including the main challenger and incumbent caretaker governor, Taban Deng Gai.

The agents are part of the overall team that participate or witness the counts in every voting center in which two of her agents are posted at every center of the state’s 267 polling centers.

It is however premature to predict a land slide victory as most of the centers have not yet reported their counts to the state electoral commission headquarters in Bentiu.

Angelina Teny, the wife of Southern Sudan’s Vice President, Dr. Riek Machar Teny, has also been the state minister of Energy and Mining in the Khartoum-based Government of National Unity for the last five years.

Disowned by her party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) after declaring her independent candidature, Teny in her manifesto explained that she was responding to “public outcry for a new leader in the state…and to save the office from falling into the hands of a different political party as the popularity of the current governor severely dwindled throughout the state.”

Educated in Great Britain, the 40+ years old gubernatorial contestant criticized the current state administration for failure to provide development services to the people for the last five years despite the presence of resources, which she described as “astonishing experience to every citizen of Unity state.”

(ST)