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Nearly 99% of southern Sudanese voters chose secession in this month's independence referendum, clearing the way for Sudan to split in two.
The official preliminary results were announced at a ceremony attended by a crowd of several thousand people in the southern capital Juba today. The figures showed that voter turnout was 98% – far above the 60% threshold required for the result to be valid.
Subject to confirmation of the final result next month, and pending legal challenges, southern Sudan will be free to declare independence on 9 July.
"This is what we voted for, so that people can be free in their own country ... I say congratulations a million times," southern Sudan's president Salva Kiir told the crowd, who had assembled at the grave of the liberation leader John Garang, who died in a helicopter crash in 2005.
The ceremony ended with the people singing of "the promised land", something southerners have dreamed of since colonial rule ended in the 1950s and the Arab-led government in Khartoum took power. Decades of marginalisation and conflict followed, with the most recent north-south war from 1983 to 2005 causing about 2 million deaths.
The peace agreement that ended the war gave southerners the option to secede through a referendum after a six-year interim period. Such was the anticipation before the vote that hundreds of thousands of people queued before dawn across the vast, undeveloped south to cast their ballots on 9 January even though the voting booths were open for a week.
The ballot has been commended by observer groups, though some problems with tallying have been reported. Many feared President Omar al-Bashir's regime in the north – which opposes secession – would use violence or other means to disrupt the vote, but it did not happen. This, added to Bashir's comments that he wanted to enjoy "brotherly" relations with the south should it secede, led to rare praise for the often-maligned leader, both internationally, and in southern Sudan. "Omar al-Bashir took the bold decision to bring peace. Bashir is a champion and we must stand with him," said Kiir today. He urged his people to remain patient over the next few months as his government was "not going to put down the flag of Sudan until July 9. The project has not finished ... We cannot declare independence today. Let us respect the agreement. We must go slowly so we can reach safely to where we are going," he added.
Voting was open to southerners living anywhere in Sudan, while those abroad could vote in eight countries, including Britain. The results showed that in southern Sudan itself 99.57% of voters chose secession, with only 16,129 out of 3.7 million people choosing unity. The result in favour of a split was overwhelming in all 10 southern states, ranging from 95.5% in Western Bahr el Gahzal to 99.98% in the oil-rich Unity state.
Many of the estimated 2 million southerners who still live in the northern half of Sudan did not register for the referendum, fearing their choice would be manipulated, or registered in the south instead. Still, 58% of the nearly 70,000 people who voted in the north chose secession over unity. The only region in the whole country where unity won out was in south Darfur, where 63% of the 9,253 voters wanted Africa's largest country to stay intact.
Mohamed Khalil Ibrahim, chairman of the referendum commission, described the result as "decisive", but said that the country's people would remain close even after the split. ""North and south are drawn together in indissoluble geographic and historic bonds," he said.
The southern government's attention will now focus on several pressingissues that need to be resolved with Bashir's regime before July. They include demarcation of the common border and a decision of what to do about Abyei, a coveted region whose own referendum on whether to join the north or south was postponed after Khartoum insisted that northern nomads be allowed to vote.
There also needs to be a deal on oil. More than three quarters of Sudan's oil reserves lie in the south, but the only pipeline runs through the north.
The south also requires a name; options being considered include Nile Republic and Cush.
But if today's results announcement was anything to go by, it will stick with what it's got. "Bless the name of this land, Southern Sudan," said Episcopalian Archbishop Daniel Deng as he opened the ceremony.
Protests in the north
If the loss of the south – and most of the Sudan's oil reserves – were not bad enough, Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir is under increasing pressure in the north.
Many there blame Bashir for the country's economic woes and, while his vast security apparatus means his grip on power remains strong, there are increasing signs of dissent.
Inspired by events in Tunisia and Egypt, groups of young Sudanese men and women took to the streets today in rare protests, demanding that Bashir and his government should resign. However, the demonstrators announced their intentions in advance through social networking sites, so police detained numerous people on Saturday night and riot police were deployed in central Khartoum this morning.
They beat and arrested people chanting slogans such as "revolution until victory" and "we are ready to die for Sudan" and officers blocked the entrances to four universities in the capital. News agency reports suggested that more than 2,000 people, many of them students, joined the protests.
Analysts say poor policies and government overspending have caused Sudan's economy to falter, with prices of basic goods rising fast and the Sudanese pound being devalued as a result.
GUARDIAN
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