KHARTOUM, Sudan — Amid widespread public apathy and calls for a boycott from opposition groups, polling stations in Sudan opened on Monday for an election that many believe is guaranteed to give President Omar Hassan al-Bashir another five years in office.
“It’s a comedy,” said Abdulhafeez Abdullah, 35, a law school graduate. “The president is certainly going to win.”
Mr. Abdullah has a big poster of Mr. Bashir in the back window of his minibus, but he said he was not going to vote.
“The poster just helps with traffic police,” he said.
The European Union
has criticized the Sudanese government for holding elections during the
country’s current violent conflicts and political unrest.
“The failure to initiate a genuine national dialogue one year after it was announced by the government of Sudan is a setback for the welfare of the people of Sudan,” Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said in a statement last week.
“When
dialogue is bypassed, some groups are excluded and civil and political
rights are infringed,” Ms. Mogherini said. “The upcoming elections
cannot produce a credible result with legitimacy throughout the
country.”
Last
year, the government called for a national dialogue with opposition
groups, but that has yet to materialize into an agreement.
Sudanese
officials said 13 million people were registered to vote in the
three-day election. Voting was scheduled throughout the country except
in some electorates in conflict zones in South Kordofan and Darfur.
Results are to be announced on April 27.
Sixteen
presidential candidates, including 10 independents, are running against
Mr. Bashir, who has been in power for more than 25 years. Candidates
from 44 political parties are running in national parliamentary and
local legislative races.
Mr. Bashir won Sudan’s last elections, in 2010, a year before a referendum that resulted in the independence of South Sudan.
On Monday, a day the government declared a national holiday, voting was light in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital.
Mr. Bashir cast his vote, along with many government officials, early in the day at St. Francis School, a Catholic school here.
Police officers were bused to El-Deim, a working-class neighborhood, to cast their votes.
Of
a total of 563 people registered to vote at an elementary school in the
Imtidad Nasser neighborhood, only 27 had shown up by noon.
Abdullah
Osman Mohamed, 58, cast his vote after finding his name on a list of
registered voters. “It is my right to vote,” he said.
Mr.
Mohamed, a supporter of the governing National Congress Party, said he
believed that the opposition was weak. “I think the opposition does not
carry the weight to compete, and that is why they want to boycott.”
Late
last year, Sudan’s opposition groups, including rebels, political
parties and civil society organizations, signed a declaration known as the Sudan Call, uniting efforts to push for change in Sudan.
“The
institutions overseeing this election are not independent,” said Bakri
Youssef, a spokesman for the National Consensus Forces, an alliance of
opposition political parties and a signatory of the Sudan Call.
“We have therefore called for a boycott of these elections,” Mr. Youssef said.
Government officials, however, say that having the elections, despite calls for a postponement, was necessary.
“The
elections are a constitutional right,” Nafi Ali Nafi, a senior member
of the governing party, said at a news conference on Sunday. “The
opposition then will come and say we are not constitutional.”
International
observers from regional organizations, including the African Union, the
Arab League and others, have teams to monitor the elections.
“So
far it is very good and well organized,” said Immaculee Nahayo, head of
an observation team from the Common Market for Eastern and Southern
Africa.
The elections will not bring much change to the country, some analysts believe.
For
the time being, the government is riding high on its improved regional
profile and its relations with Saudi Arabia and Egypt “and is expecting
generous reward for its role in Decisive Storm,” said Magdi el-Gizouli, a
fellow with the Rift Valley Institute, referring to the Saudi-led
campaign against the Iranian-backed Houthi movement in Yemen.
“But
continuation of the status quo,” Mr. Gizouli said, “only obfuscates the
obvious: The country is ravaged by wars, displacement and the utter
collapse of the rural economy.”
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