Khartoum, March 23: Sudan’s electoral commission on Monday rejected a call by international observers for the country’s first multi-party elections in 24 years to be postponed for logistical reasons.
The Carter Center had last week urged authorities to delay the elections because of what it said was the National Elections Commission’s “limited capacity” to organise the polls.
But NEC deputy chairman Ahmed Abdallah said “the Carter Center relies on false information that did not come from us,” and insisted the elections would take place on April 11 as planned.
“Publishing this information could have a negative impact on the electoral process,” he told reporters on Monday.
The Sudanese authorities have allowed the Center, founded by former US president Jimmy Carter, to observe the electoral process in Africa’s largest country, which covers 2.5 million square kilometres (1.6 million square miles) and has a population of more than 40 million.
Human Rights Watch said on Sunday that Sudanese government repression of its opponents and the media was threatening the chances of next month’s elections being “free, fair, and credible.”
Opposition parties had already called for the April 11 to 13 poll to be delayed.
Sudan’s legislative, regional and presidential elections are one of the key provisions of the 2005 peace accord between the north and south that brought two decades of civil war to an end.
The vote is also the first genuine electoral challenge faced by current President Omar al-Beshir who came to power in a military coup in 1989, three years after Sudan’s last multi-party poll.
Opponents of Beshir say he has a head start in the presidential race due to his access to state media.
—Agencies