Sudan’s ruling party expresses concerns over neutrality of Juba referendum body
August 28, 2010 (KHARTOUM) — The dominant National Congress Party (NCP) today casted doubts on the neutrality of the Juba based referendum commission branch saying it is fully under the control of Southern Sudan ruling party which suspected by Khartoum of promoting separation.
Headed by Justice Chan Rec Madut who is also the Deputy Chairperson of Southern Sudan Referendum Commission, the 51 members of SSRB sworn in last week before the Chairperson of the Commission.
According to the information collected by the NCP, 46 of the SSRB are SPLM members and two from another party supportive for Southern Sudan independence, SANU, while two others are not identified said Shella. He further added that one of the members is Ugandan-born.
He said that these figures show that the SPLM can manipulate the result of the referendum and indicate the possibility of fraud in the crucial vote for southern Sudan independence.
The two peace signatories, NCP and SPLM, trade accusations of working to manipulate the result of the referendum. Both asked the United Nations to monitor the crucial process which is the last step in the implementation of Comprehensive Peace Agreement.
Shella said the membership of the Commission is required to be neutral and non-partisan underlining that the parliament had excluded Taj Alsir Mohamed Saleh because of his membership in the Democratic Unionist Party.
“When we call to assign the security (of the referendum process) for the police national and the monitoring to local and international instances we were hedging against such behavior,” he stressed.
On June 14, 2010, The SPLM had objected the appointment of Taj Alsir as a member of the Commission saying he would compromise the neutrality of the Commission. Later on, the Sudanese Presidency agreed to replace him by Kamal Ali Mohamed Saleh.
(ST)