Khartoum, May 25: Sudanese MPs on Monday chose to keep as their speaker a member of President Omar al-Beshir’s ruling party in the first session since parliament’s formation in April.
Ibrahim Ahmed al-Taher of the National Congress Party (NCP) was elected by 383 votes against 26 for his rival, Ismail Hussein Fadel of Hassan al-Turabi’s Popular Congress Party.
Ten members of the 450-seat parliament did not attend Monday’s session.
Taher, who was appointed speaker in 2005 after the signing of a peace treaty between Khartoum and south Sudan rebels, focused in his inaugural speech on a January 2011 referendum on the autonomy of southern Sudan.
“The assembly’s first task is to call upon southerners to preserve the unity of Sudan because that is what serves their interests,” Taher said.
“Separation will only bring division and war,” he said.
He added that parliament “will also have to resolve the conflict in Darfur.
“Weapons and murder have not provided an answer to the demands of the people and it is up to the representatives of the people to complete the path to peace,” he said.
Sudanese headed to the polls last month to vote for a president as well as legislative and local representatives in the country’s first multi-party election since 1986.
The new assembly is dominated by Beshir’s NCP, which holds 300 seats. The former southern rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement holds 99 seats.
The opening session in parliament comes only days before Beshir is scheduled to be re-inaugurated as president for a five-year term.
Beshir, who seized control of Africa’s largest country in a military coup in 1989, is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes in Darfur.
Critics say the ICC warrant singles out weak states like Sudan, while taking a hypocritical stance towards countries like the US and Israel.
The Darfur conflict erupted in February 2003, when rebels took up arms against the central government in Khartoum and its allies.
The United Nations says up to 300,000 people have died from the combined effects of war, famine and disease.
—Agencies