US envoy Gration brokered breakthrough in referendum body deadlock, sources

August 24, 2010 (KHARTOUM) – The breakthrough in the deadlock over the appointment of a secretary-general to the commission charged with organizing south Sudan’s referendum on self-determination has been brokered by the US special envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration, sources have told Sudan Tribune.

Sudan’s ruling partners, the SPLM of the mainly animist and Christian south Sudan and the NCP of the Muslim-dominated north, have been deadlocked over the position of the commission’s secretary-general.

Last week, the commission’s chairman, Mohamed Ibrahim Khaili, threatened to resign, complaining that the southerners of the 9-member commission were voting as a block to prevent any northerner from taking the disputed post.

Yesterday, the SPLM announced it had agreed to cede the position to northerners. Speaking to Reuters, the SPLM’s secretary-general Yasir Arman said that “The secretary-general is not the issue, having the referendum on time is.” Arman added “”There’s a deputy secretary-general so he can be a southerner.”

A source privy to the situation told Sudan Tribune yesterday on condition of anonymity that it was the US special envoy, Scott Gration who persuaded the SPLM’s leadership to concede the position. In return, the source says, Gration had promised the SPLM that the referendum would be held as scheduled and that it would get the position of the commission’s deputy secretary-general which will be based in the south.

Furthermore, the source revealed that officials of the UN and the International Foundation for Elections System (IFES), a body providing technical assistance to the referendum process, told Gration in a meeting on Friday, August 20, at a donor office in Juba that his estimates of holding the referendum on time were “legally impossible.”, in reference to the timing constraints stipulated in the referendum act.

But Yasir Arman said that the SPLM had also decided to alter the scheduling of some of the process’s phases.

“Some of the timings outlined in the referendum law, such as completing voter registration three months before the vote, could be rearranged” he told Reuters, adding “It’s about rescheduling, we are ready to reschedule things, the time is still enough but you can reschedule different operations.”

The referendum on south Sudan’s possible independence from the north is the key plank of the 2005’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the peace deal that brought decades of civil war and granted south Sudan semi-autonomous rule.

(ST)