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From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Wed Aug 18 2010 - 08:46:15 EDT
http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article35995
SPLM to boycott referendum meeting with Sudanese president
Wednesday 18 August 2010.
August 17, 2010 (KHARTOUM) — The ex-Southern rebel group announced that it
will not take part in a meeting called for by Sudanese president Omer Hassan
Al-Bashir scheduled for Thursday to discuss preparations for referendum.
FILE - Sudanese former candidates who have boycotted the Presidency
elections, Mubarak al-Fadil, head of the Umma Renewal and Reform Party,
right, and Yasser Arman, of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement party,
SPLM, during a press conference in Khartoum, Sudan, Monday, April 12, 2010
(AP) Ibrahim Ghandour, the head of political relations bureau at the ruling
National Congress Party (NCP) headed by Bashir, said invitations were sent
to all political parties without exception.
The meeting was originally scheduled for last month but was cancelled after
opposition parties insisted that other issues to be discussed including
Darfur crisis, deteriorating economic conditions of the people, democratic
transformation and political freedoms.
Some parties accused NCP at the time of seeking to them share the
responsibility for splitting up the nations despite marginalizing them in
all the crucial decisions that led to this situation.
In less than six months time, people from Sudan’s oil-producing south are
due to vote in a referendum on whether they should secede and form Africa’s
newest nation — a plebiscite promised under a 2005 accord that ended decades
of north-south civil war.
It is widely expected that the Southerners will opt for secession after
decades of bitter war that claimed millions of lives and feelings of
marginalization by the Arab-Muslim dominated North.
The Sudan People Liberation Movement (SPLM) deputy secretary general Yasir
Arman said in a statement today that the political bureau of the movement
decided to skip the meeting with Bashir.
"This [meeting] appears more of an NCP leadership meeting than a joint
meeting of political powers that allows everyone to reach a consensus and
come with a joint vision" Arman said in the statement.
"Therefore the SPLM regrets that it will not be part of Thursday’s meetings
and we hope to participate in an upcoming meeting that would have better
preparation and agreement among its participants,".
It is not clear whether other parties will share the same position by the
SPLM. Previously the Umma Party headed by Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi rejected
Bashir’s invitation saying it was addressed to its leader and not to the
party.
In a related issue, the NCP said that an arrangement known as the "four
freedoms" cannot be put in place between the North and South in the event of
secession.
The head of the NCP organization bureau told the government sponsored
Sudanese Media Centre (SMC) website that if the South becomes an independent
sate it will be responsible for its people.
The "four freedoms" is an accord signed between Sudan and Egypt that allows
citizens from both countries to have the right to work, reside, own and move
freely between the two countries. It has yet to be fully implemented between
the countries due to objections from the Egyptian parliament.
A meeting hosted by Cairo last month between the NCP and the SPLM suggested
a similar accord between the North and South for a post-separation state.
(ST)
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