Beijing,April 27: Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court, was on Monday declared winner of the country’s first multi-party presidential election.
Beshir, who has long had troubled ties with the West, immediately pledged to respect the provisions of a Western-backed peace agreement with southern rebels that ended Africa’s longest-running civil war.
But his poll victory, 21 years after he seized power in a bloodless coup, was marred by opposition boycotts, allegations of fraud and questions from European monitors over the transparency of the count.
“The winner in the election of the president of the republic is Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Beshir from the National Congress Party,” National Election Commission (NEC) chairman Abel Alier told reporters in Khartoum.
Beshir won 68 percent of the election with 6,901,694 votes, Alier added.
Salva Kiir, leader of the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), was declared winner of the simultaneous election for the presidency of the autonomous regional government of south Sudan.
Kiir, a former rebel commander and fervent Christian who is committed to independence from the Khartoum government, won 92.9 percent in the south with 2,616,613 votes, Alier said.
Kiir had chosen not to stand against Beshir for the national presidency but instead to campaign to lead the south towards an independence referendum promised for next January under the landmark 2005 peace deal between his movement and the Khartoum government.
In a televised address after his victory, Beshir, who championed Sudanese unity in his campaign, pledged that the independence vote would go ahead.
“I assure (you) the referendum in south Sudan will take place on schedule,” he said.
Victory for Beshir had been virtually guaranteed by the withdrawal of his two key challengers in the presidential race — Sudan’s last democratically elected leader, prime minister Sadiq al-Mahdi whom he overthrew in his 1989 coup, and SPLM candidate Yasser Arman.
Arman said on Monday he believed Beshir had “lost” the election, judging by the number of abstentions and accusations of fraud.
“I believe Beshir lost the elections,” Arman told reporters in Khartoum.
He had announced his withdrawal from the race before polling day but after the ballot papers had been printed. Despite his boycott, Arman secured 2.1 million votes (21.69 percent) to come second.
“The National Election Commission told us there were 16 million Sudanese who registered and Beshir got six million and this six million (figure) is contested… that means 10 million Sudanese do not want Beshir,” he said.
Beshir had hoped that a landslide victory in the landmark elections would discredit an arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court in March 2009 for alleged war crimes in the western region of Darfur.
An arid region the size of France, Darfur has been gripped by a civil war since 2003 when ethnic rebels rose up against the government, complaining of marginalisation.
The war has cost the lives of 300,000 people and displaced around 2.7 million, according to the United Nations. Khartoum puts the toll at 10,000.
In his victory address, Beshir promised that he would intensify faltering efforts to reach peace agreements with Darfur’s myriad rebel factions.
“I assure (you)… that we will work for peace in Darfur,” he said.
A senior presidential aide, Nafie Ali Nafie, had said ahead of the results that victory for Beshir would prove the war crime allegations against him were “false.”
But on Monday, EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg reiterated their support for the International Criminal Court, insisting that “impunity for the most serious crimes under international law can never be accepted.”
Sudan’s first multi-party elections since 1986 — in which voters were electing parliamentary and state representatives as well as a president — were marred by complaints from opposition leaders and foreign poll monitors, as well as by accusations of fraud.
Observers from the European Union and the Carter Centre — headed by former US president Jimmy Carter — said after the five days of voting ended on April 15 that the election had failed to reach international standards.
–Agencies