Taban Deng locally announced winner in Sudan’s Unity state

April 23, 2010 (BENTINU) – News just broke out from the local Radio FM station in Bentiu, that the incumbent governor Taban Deng Gai has been announced as winner by the head of the local electoral committee in Bentiu, before NEC committee carried out their verifications.

However, the Chairman of the National Elections Committee (NEC), Abel Alier has condemned the announcement as premature and was not coordinated with his head office in Khartoum.

Speaking on telephone from Khartoum, Abel Alier informed Angelina Teny that NEC did not announce the winner yet and was instead in the process of looking into the alleged inflating of figures in favor of Taban Deng by the electoral office in Bentiu before it could make the decision on who won the race.

The chairman of the local electoral committee in Bentiu, Michael Mayul, on Friday rushed to announced Taban the winner in a move seen as away to try to avoid the verification of figures by the NEC team in Khartoum.

The announcement prompted a peaceful protest by supporters of Angelina Teny resulting to three people killed and two more wounded when SPLA forces reportedly attacked the protesters. The situation has remained tense.

NEC office in Khartoum is to look into what caused the premature and uncoordinated announcement before the verification of results following the alleged inflating of figures by the electoral office in Bentiu.

Preliminary results had shown that Angelina Teny got more than 68,000 votes while Taban Deng got over 44,000.

The recently alleged inflated figures for Taban have more than tripled his previous votes counted by additional 56,000.

Angelina Teny had earlier warned that the electoral committee in Bentiu was under pressure by Taban Deng to inflate his votes figures and announce him the winner.

NEC head office in Khartoum is expected to release its official reaction to the “premature” announcement soon.

(ST)