South Sudan sets referendum timetable

  1. Posted on Wednesday 6 October 2010 - 10:35
    Muhyadin
    Muhyadin Ahmed Roble, AfricaNews reporter in Nairobi, Kenya
    Sudanese officials announced that Southern Sudan's independence referendum will take place on time. Chan Reec Madut, deputy chairman of the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission, said the voter registration will start on 14 November and end on 4 December.
    SUDAN-South Sudan party to boycott April 11 elections
    The referendum commission expects that the final voter list will be ready before December 31. The parties would be allowed to start their campaign on December 7.

    He says the voters will come out on January 9 to vote for whether South Sudan will be independent state or to remain part of a united Sudan.

    "I am still optimistic that if we are all registered, everybody has his or her card, and then we can be sure that this exercise is going to happen no matter what," Reec told reporters in the southern regional capital Juba.

    He said voter registration material is being printed in South Africa, while ballot papers will also be printed outside Sudan with security devices fitted to prevent fraud.

    The poll will take place across Sudan but only southerners will be eligible to vote. It will also take place in eight other countries -- neighbouring Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia and Egypt, as well as in Australia, Britain, the United States and Canada.

    In those countries, the intergovernmental International Organisation for Migration (IOM) will assist the registration process, Reec added.

    Southern Sudan President Salva Kiir warned on Friday that a delay in the referendum could cause a return to violence "on a massive scale" in Sudan.

    The referendum was part of a 2005 peace deal to end two decades of conflict between the north and oil-rich south in which some 1.5 million people died.

    The referendum was part of a 2005 peace deal to end two decades of conflict between the north and oil-rich south in which some 1.5 million people died.

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