Do preliminary results mean election victory?

Do preliminary results mean election victory?

By Zechariah Manyok Biar

April 29, 2010 — South Sudanese and the leaders of political parties had generally shown democratic maturity during the voting and the announcements of election results in South Sudan, even though there were some few incidents of violence and intimidations. Part of maturity is the respect for the rule of law. South Sudanese like me are now encouraged by the decision made by the election losers to challenge election results in court. What we will now turn our attention to is whether the claims of rigging hold water to the point where they will survive court hearings. The claim that many losers have is that they won in preliminary results. But, do preliminary results mean victory in elections?

Different people will have different answers to the question of whether preliminary results mean victory in elections or not. The losers would say that the preliminary results mean the winning of election for the leading candidate in those results. The winners would say that preliminary results do not mean victory in elections. I would say that the answer is not black and white. Preliminary results may or may not mean victory in elections.

Preliminary results would mean victory only if 80% of ballots have been counted. Candidates in elections are supported differently in polling stations. One candidate can secure about 90% of votes in one area and that area would be the one not yet counted when the preliminary results are projected. So, in this situation, if those who project the preliminary results have not considered the overall percentage of the ballots casted, they would jump into false conclusion about the winner. In the case where the most populated area is counted at last, the candidate who trails behind in preliminary results would become the overall winner when all the votes have been counted. That means even 70% of the ballot counted cannot determine the winner, unless the uncounted votes are from areas less populated.

Even though the preliminary results would mean election victory when the votes counted have reached 80% and the people projecting the preliminary results have considered the overall percentage of the votes casted in the whole area, there would still be a margin of error in the estimation. So, what should be considered after the announcement of the overall election results is whether the margin of error is unrealistic or not. For example, the candidate who trails behind after 80% votes have been counted may still win, but with a very narrow margin. If the margin is very narrow, say 2%, then the possibilities of foul play may be taken seriously.

Let us take the results of the President of South Sudan and see how the claims for rigging would be realistic or unrealistic. President Kiir got 92.99% and his rival Dr. Lam Akol got 7.1%. Lam’s party, however, has done well in Malakal. If the counting started in Malakal, the preliminary results would have indicated that Lam was leading Kiir at the wider margin. That may look true. But things may change when we consider nine other states in South Sudan.

The example of Malakal will also be good for the claims of intimidation by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), as alleged by the opposition parties in the South. We would consider Lt. Gen. Oyai Deng Ajak, the former SPLA Chief of General Staff and the Minister of Regional Cooperation. He lost to Sudan People’s Liberation Movement for Democratic Change (SPLM-D.C.) candidate in Malakal. If there was one person that SPLA would have protected, it would have been Gen. Oyai. But he lost because SPLM-D.C. is popular in Malakal.

Another example is that of Western Equatoria State (WES). The intimidation of the independent candidate was very high in that state from the supporters of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement’s (SPLM) gubernatorial candidate. The electoral commission officials could not even sleep in their homes because somebody would have killed them. Uncountable ballot papers were burned by unidentified people because they were from the area where the independent candidate was popular. Despite all these, the independent candidate beat SPLM candidate for governor in WES, and nobody altered the results.

If intimidation was what altered the results in favor of SPLM candidates in South Sudan, then the incumbent Governor of WES would have won. The SPLM members of parliament who lost their positions in Upper Nile State would have won. There would have been other places in the rest of nine states in South Sudan where voters would have defied intimidation like they did in Malakal and in WES in favor of SPLM-D.C. and independent candidates.

I think some candidates who have lost at a very clear wider margin between them and their opponents and still claim that they were winners because of preliminary results will have hard time making their case in court. For example, if Dr. Lam Akol were to challenge the results of presidency of South Sudan, he would have to make a convincing argument to explain away at least 80% of results given to President Kiir in order for him to come closer to a reasonable margin between him and Kiir. And if 80% were obtained through foul play by Kiir, then the international election observers will explain what they were doing in South Sudan during elections. There is no way such a large percentage could be obtained through rigging and not detected by independent election observers.

There are very few incidents of rigging that will pass a thorough court analysis based on the preliminary results claims, especially the ones that the margin between the losers and the winners are narrower. In the cases where the margins are wider, the preliminary results will not be a good reason for anybody to claim the winning of elections in court, unless our judges lack critical thinking.

Zechariah Manyok Biar is a graduate student at Abilene Christian University, Texas, USA. He graduated with a Master of Arts in Christian Ministry in December 2009, and he has just finished a Master of Science in Social Work, specializing in Administration and Planning. For comments, contact him at email: [email protected]