Over 3.2 million voters registered in South Sudan for referendum
By Julius N. Uma & Bonifacio Taban Kuich
December 14, 2010 (JUBA) – A total of 3,275,577 people, representing 96% of eligible voters have registered in Southern Sudan ahead of the region’s independence referendum on January 9, according to officials from the Southern Sudan Referendum Bureau (SSRB).
Madut said in the next two to three days they are hope to receive the final reports from these areas. These include Upper Nile 2 centers, Unity State 2 centers, Warap State 22 centers, North Bar-el-Gazal 5 centers, Central Equatoria 1 center, Eastern Equatoria 22 centers.
In northern Sudan 116,890 Southern Sudanese have registered for the vote, which is likely to see Africa’s largest country split in two.
“We are on course and remain confident that the referendum will take place as scheduled on January 9, 2011. As usual, we shall regularly update our people on the progress being made especially concerning the actual numbers of registered voters once the referendum commission has obtained all results,” Justice Chan Reec told a press conference held in Juba, the South Sudan capital.
Voter registration officially ended on December 8, in the 2,623 and 165 registration centers established in the south and north of the country respectively.
He said the exercise was conducted peacefully with the exception of an incident in Nasir, Jonglei state, where a referendum official was shot and killed. However, Madut said that this had no connection to his role working for the states referendum committee.
Regarding the bombing of northern Barh-el-Gazal in southern Sudan by the northern army during the registration process, confirmed on Monday by the UN, Madut said that this shoiuld be left to politicians to resolve.
Madut said four million ballots have been printed in the United Kingdom. He expects them to arrive in Juba by the end of the week in order for distribution throughout Southern Sudan to begin before December 21.
The SSRB chairperson said that he belives the vote will go ahead on schedule on January 9, despite the delays including the funding of the bureau and and the Khartoum-based Southern Sudan Referendum Commission.
The widely-publicized registration exercise, also encompassed southern Sudanese living in the Diaspora.
DIASPORA REGISTRATION FIGURES UNVEILED
According to Justice Chan Reec, also deputy Chairperson of the referendum commission based in Khartoum, Diaspora voting has officially closed, with the exception of Egypt and the US where the start was delayed for technical reasons.
As such, he added, voters in Egypt and the US have until December 18 and 22 respectively to register.
However, Justice Chan Reec announced that 9,431 have registered in Australia; 2,294 in Canada; 2,985 in Egypt; 7,370 in Ethiopia; 15,021 in Kenya; 13,291 in Uganda; and 654 people in the UK.
Meanwhile, the SSRB Chairperson has dismissed the recently filed National Congress Party (NCP)-backed lawsuit against the referendum commission, describing it as “frivolous and baseless”.
Last week, a pro-government website reported that the Supreme Council for Peace and Unity filed a lawsuit with the constitutional court, claiming that the South’s ruling SPLM controls the performance and work of the SSRC and the SPLM. The law suit also alleged that the commission had acted contrary to the interim constitution and the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).
Reacting to this, Justice Chan Reec said, “The law is very clear on the referendum. How can someone now emerge to say the referendum commission is operating illegally? These are simply frivolous and baseless moves aimed at derailing the smooth conduct of the referendum.”
Beatrice Khamisa, the SSRB official in-charge of finance and administration also told the press conference that the training of trainers (TOT) for the plebiscite was nearing conclusion.
The training, she added, tackles issues pertaining to the voting processes and procedures to equip staffs from all across all 10 southern states with the skills and expertise they need to conduct the referendum.
The referendum on the self-determination of the southern population is a key part of Sudan’s 2005 Comprehensive Pace Agreement (CPA), which ended over two-decades of a bloody civil war between Christian dominated south and the north, which is governed by Islamic Sharia Law.
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Anyang
Over 3.2 million voters registered in South Sudan for referendum
Sound great,let the momentum continues and we will surely get there.
landlord
Over 3.2 million voters registered in South Sudan for referendum
This is a remainder of who is who because there are some confused people who whan to preach same one who is dead huff
death to him
we are very close to the door God’s help
South Sudan’s strong man after Salva Kiir, vice President of the Government of Southern Sudan Dr Riek Machar, is in an acute dilemma and a slightly awkward position between the calls of his duty to the peoples of southern Sudan, and his affection to his new American wife Becky Machar.
Our sources in Juba University and other circles in the southern capital, who all nat- urally refuse to be named, tell us that Machar’s new wife, 57 year old Becky Hagmann, is more and more intervening in the daily work of her husband to the extent that she barges into political meetings without prior permission. So who is Becky Hagmann/Machar?
Mrs Hagmann was brought up in a devoted Christian family in rural America, and by that country’s standards could be said to have grown up with less material means than an average US household. Her folk, although poor, appear to be decent people. She married the priest Hagmann and they worked together in a church-run charity collecting donations from the congregation and sending it to the war torn southern Sudan. Mrs Hagmann’s work in the south prior to the peace agreement was how she came to meet, and apparently fall in love with the Nuer leader and one of the founders of the SPLM, Riek Machar Teny. She isn’t the first white western lady to catch the attention of the GoSS vice President though. Machar’s first non-Sudanese wife, was the late Emma Mc Cune, a British aid worker who, like Hagmann, also worked with children in south Sudan during the war. Machar’s first wife is political activist and ex state minister for petroleum at the federal level, Mrs Anglina Teny, who shot to international fame during the last elections when she contested the results of Unity State gubertronia race, though a lot of bloodshed was averted by her directions to her followers to abstain from violence. The late McCune went to war-torn Sudan in 1987 at age 23 to teach for the British organisation Volunteer Services Overseas. Afterreluctantly returning to England in 1988 McCune once again returned to Sudan in 1989 to work for the UNICEF-funded Canadian organisation Street Kids International, which founded or re-opened more than 100 village schools in the country’s south. McCune spent much of the late1980s in the south in the midst of war and famine. Riek and Emma instantly fell in love and he proposed to her on their second meeting. Emma died in a car accident in Nairobi in 1993.
Hagmann on the other hand continued to have an on-off relation with Machar since the mid 1990s but only married him a few months ago this year. From the accounts we received from our sources it seems she’s out to make up for her poor child- hood by living and acting, or perhaps over- acting, the role of Queen without Kingdom. She has apparrne;ly used her imaginery royal privillages by flying into Juba her three children from an earlier marriage and then taking them on a luxury safari trip to Kenya at the expense of the southern tax payers’ money. But her more flagrant “royal trait” is her belief that she can simply get into any meeting Machar is attending and even ending the meeting.
At a meeting at Juba University attended by her husband, those present were shocked when she barged into the meeting and announced that her hubby, Riek Machar, has no time to continue the meeting as he had more urgent matters to attend to. What were the urgent matters?
It seems the American rural girl has issued directives that her husband spend more time with her either mountaineering in Jebel Kujor or at his farm. Indeed her interferences in Machar’s daily schedule extended to ordering his office staff to change the furniture. Is the rural girl south Sudan’s new queen? That’d the question on everyone’s mind, especially those who witnessed Mrs Becky Hagmann/Machar’s unannounced intrusions into closed political meetings.
Anyang
Over 3.2 million voters registered in South Sudan for referendum
Landlord,
If this is right then Southerness will have the right to question Mr VP patrioticism.Literally,I thinks, Its would be nice if you can give us the sources to simply back up your claim.
Victory
Over 3.2 million voters registered in South Sudan for referendum
Landlord:
let your comment be short and sweet,& with a significent ideas so it can benfit the reader politicaly & phsycologyically.
Chanson
Over 3.2 million voters registered in South Sudan for referendum
Dear folks. Lets take these quotes, for benefits of changing behaviors toward our lifes in the South Sudan.
All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. ~Anatole France.
He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery. ~Harold Wilson.
Dear.
Mr Landlord and Omoni.please guys minimize that awkward kind of exchanging comments.this way can not ever help South Sudan at all.In One way or other.We are here to change the current situation that we are in now from our greatest enemy. Lets not be an enemies of ourselves.Cann,t you see guys.the percentage that we secured(96%) is really agood move.If we talk about the fact on the ground!
I know, no body may reject changes at all in life. Except if someone is a half human-being.
Long live South Sudan.
Long live SPLA/m.
Long live exalt people.
Thanks
&
Cheers.
Chan$on.
Hobu Hong
Over 3.2 million voters registered in South Sudan for referendum
Honyongiyoiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, Northern Sudan is gone to hell !.
Southern Sudan is already an independent country. Why ?. Because the agreed % has exceeded the CPA propriatory %.
SPLM Oyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
SPLA Oyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Ten States Oyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
People of south Sudan Oyeeeeee
Myself Oyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee