S. Sudan referendum enters 'numerical game'

Xinhua, January 13, 2011

The south Sudan referendum, which completed its fourth day, seemed to have entered on Wednesday a phase that could be termed as "numerical game", amid a legal concern which necessitates that 60 percent of the total registered voters should vote for the referendum to be valid.

Presently it has become clear that the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) is in a hurry to prove that the voters who cast their votes during the past four days have surpassed the threshold of the 60 percent, indicating that the referendum quorum has become legal.

In this respect, SPLM deputy secretary-general Anne Itto said at a press conference in Juba on Wednesday that "after three days of voting we have passed the threshold of the 60 percent."

However South Sudan Referendum Commission (SSRC), which is entrusted with judging the legitimacy of the referendum, has not confirmed what the SPLM has announced of reaching the legal quorum for the referendum.

"The SSRC office in Juba has not received complete information about the voting rates and therefore we, at the SSRC headquarters, have not received any numbers specifying the rates," Suaad Ibrahim Iyssa, SSRC spokesperson, told reporters in Khartoum Wednesday.

For the referendum to be valid, a legal quorum of 60 percent of the total eligible registered voters is needed while the referendum result should be decided by a majority of 50 percent plus one, regarding the two options of the referendum, either unity or separation.

Therefore, for the referendum to be legal, 2,258,549 out of the eligible registered 3,930,916 voters should vote.

Additionally, to pass one of the two options of the referendum, the wining option should reach a legal quorum of 1,965,459 votes, which is half of total registered voters plus one.

Observers do not expect the south Sudan referendum to fail to reach the legal quorum of 60 percent, attributing that to the intensive turnout on the part of the voters in south Sudan who amount to 3,753,815 voters.

In this regard, Sudanese political analyst Omer El-Nur told Xinhua that "definitely the voting rate will surpass the required 60 percent for the referendum to be valid, particularly under the intensive turnout for the voters in south Sudan."

"Over 90 percent of the total voters are in south Sudan and there is an intensive turnout in the south for logical factors including the remarkable interest for participation in the referendum together with the influence of the SPLM and its ability to mobilize the biggest number of voters," he added.

He further said that "it is true that the voting rate in north Sudan is still weak, but the number of voters in the north is very small and does not affect the overall rate of participation in the referendum process."

Ibrahim Abdel-Karim, the Sudanese lawyer and political analyst, for his part criticized the South Sudan Referendum Act (SSRA).

He told Xinhua that "this is a very bad act for it cannot stipulate participation of only 60 percent of the registered voters for the referendum to be legal without specifying the minimum number of the total voters."

"Presently there are less than four million eligible registered voters for the south Sudan referendum, and according to the Act, participation of around 2.4 million voters will grant legitimacy for the south Sudan referendum. So how comes that such a little number of voters decide the fate of Sudan which its population amounts to around 40 million people, he said.

Abdel-Karim went on saying that "additionally, the referendum act stipulates that the wining referendum option must receive half the votes of the voters plus one, which means less than two million, and therefore, it is unlikely besides that it was a big mistake on the part of the Sudanese legislators to pass such an act."

The south Sudan referendum is stipulated by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), inked between north and south Sudan in 2005, which ended the longest civil war in Africa.

The voting process, which started on Sunday, is scheduled to last for a whole week, while the primary result of the referendum is set to be announced by the end of January, provided that the final official results would be announced by the SSRC on Feb. 14.