SPLM threatens to conduct Abyei referendum through local administration

August 22, 2010 (KHARTOUM) – The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) of south Sudan has threatened to devolve the responsibility of implementing the Abyei referendum to the area’s local administration if the standoff over the appointment of the area’s referendum commission continues.

Under the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which ended decades of civil war between north and south Sudan, Abyei is due to hold a referendum at the same time as south Sudan’s referendum on self-determination in January 2011 to decide whether to join the south or remain in the north.

The Abyei Area Referendum Act, passed at the end of 2009, stipulated that a referendum commission should be established as soon as the law came into force. More than eight months later the commission remains unformed because of disputes between the ruling partners, the SPLM and the National Congress Party (NCP), over the composition of the commission’s members.

Pagan Amum, SPLM’s secretary-general, yesterday threatened that “If the NCP rejects the SPLM’s nominee for the chairmanship of Abyei Referendum Commission and we remain deadlocked, we will resort to other measures such as conducting Abyei’s referendum directly through the region’s local administration.”

The boundaries of Abyei are strongly contested because of disputes between the two partners over control of the area’s rich oil fields as well as disputes over shared use of land resources between the Ngok Dinka and misseriyah Arab nomadic tribe. Disputes over the region’s boundaries led the ruling partners to resort to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague which in July 2009 redefined the area’s boundaries.

Recently, the chief administrator of Abyei, Deng Arop, accused the NCP of trying to settle a large number of Misseriyah in the area with the aim of changing its demographic makeup to influence the outcome of the referendum.

(ST)