The Sudanese people are being called these days to choose a President and elect a Parliament. Many foreign observers have been invited to watch the proceedings. From the Arab League, from the Organisation of African Unity, from the United Nations Organisation, from the European Union, from the international press, etc., they answered the invitation, which seems to show that international opinion is taking this political event seriously.
For public opinion in Sudan, it is much ado about nothing, to wit:
Although the most important problem in Sudan is the civil war, the territories controlled by the rebels are not taking part in the elections. This includes a large section of seven of the ten Southern Governorates, the Northern constituencies that are up in arms against the Khartoum Government, i.e. at least part of the Nuba Mountains, the Southern Blue Nile, and the districts  bordering on Eritrea. The Sudanese People Liberation Movement/Army are pressing the same foreign observers to come into these areas and see for themselves that no elections are held, for fear, they say, Beshir might claim later on that the people voted for him en masse.
There are five presidential candidates; President Beshir, three nonentities, and former President Nimeiri who was thrown out of power by a popular uprising. Nimeiri’s candidacy plays right into the hands of the men in power: they can boast of fair play  without running any risk.
The opposition has not put forward any presidential or parliamentary candidate. No candidate from Turabi’s National Popular Congress. No candidate from the parties forming the National Democratic Alliance. No candidate from the USAP (a non-separatist Southern party). No candidate from Sadiq-al -Madhi’s Umma Party. The Opposition’s catchword is simply “boycott’. The first  reason they give is that they  have no confidence in the way the ballots are conducted. The lists of voters are said to be largely faked and inflated, the supporters of the regime being driven by lorries to cast their votes in each polling station, one after the other. Furthermore, their main arguments are political. In the opinion of Turabi, these elections are anti-constitutional and unlawful. The PDU do not want to take part in one-sided elections. The USAP object that the men in power want to create a ‘de facto’ situation. The Umma Party maintain that those elections ought to have been scheduled to take place after the National Reconciliation Conference, not before.
An official statement on TV that the security forces will be ‘very tolerant’ throughout the electoral campaign met with general scepticism. During the following days, the arrest of nine of the most prominent leaders of the opposition made this distrust good (read further Human Rights news). The opposition appealed to the Supreme Court for postponement of the elections on the ground that the political situation prevailing at the moment in Sudan was not conducive to proper democratic and fair elections. The Supreme Court did postpone the ballots, for two days. Only some minor pro-government parties created within the frame of the tawali law are present with the National Congress.

It was nevertheless the time chosen by Sadiq-al-Mahdi, a former Prime Minister who had been democratically elected but driven out of power by the Islamic Revolution, a religious leader and the boss of the Umma Party, to come back from exile. Beshir, who is trying to assimilate him, declared that al-Mahdi could participate in the political life of the nation, either in the Government, without specifying in which capacity, or in the opposition, which is fraught with danger. (Read further two articles published by the Indian Ocean Newsletter on al-Mahdi’s return).

Another force has manifested itself in an outburst of violence. The faithful of the mosque Ansar el Sunna at Omdurman were at prayer when they were brutally set upon by assault rifle, which left 23 dead and 37 wounded behind. Abbas Baqir Abbas, an assailant, was killed by the police who had come to the rescue of the worshippers. He belonged to the group Takfir wa ‘l-Hifra, in other words ‘Expiation and Self-denial » : they are  a group of uncompromising fundamentalist Moselm. They are said to have already attacked a mosque in 1993, had clashes whith the police which left eight dead in 1994, and destroyed a Christian multi-purpose center in a shanty town in August 1999 etc.; many of the members of this movement once belonged to the National Islamic Front (which is now known as the National Congress), and  many had close bonds with Usama ben Laden. Takfir wa ‘l-Hifra seems to have the same goal as Ansar el Sunna, but the way of reaching it is different: the former relies on violence, the latter on persuasion. 

According to the Egyptian News Agency, the bullets were coming from three different directions, there were apparently three different attackers at least. Therefore, since one was killed, the others must have managed to escape. Meanwhile the Ministry of Home Affairs insists on the presence of only one assailant, the one that was shot down in the affray. An assault carried out by one gunman single-handed on a crowd would not have been the tactics employed by Takfir wa ‘l-Hifra earlier. This might mean that there are some infiltrations between Takfir wa ‘l-Hifra and official or semi-official forces. Moreover, if  ArabicNews.Com is to be believed, this incident was seized upon by Khartoum to increase its Security Forces untrammelled power of repression: formally a suspect could not be kept more than two months in detention without the approval of a prosecutor; a suspect can now be kept in detention for two consecutive stretches of three months each, without further ado. 

The IGAD, mediator between the Sudanese Government and the SPLM/A, is, first and foremost, a regional association, whose main task is to tackle the problems of recurrent drought and promote development. It was a diplomatic success for the Sudanese regime to host in Khartoum the summit of the Heads of States of this organisation. This meeting was attended, besides Sudan the host country, by Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia. But Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni and Kenya’s Arap Moi, who are both playing a major part in the mediation between Khartoum and the rebels, were conspicuously absent. 
Among the achievements, IGAD considers merging its Sudanese peace initiative with that jointly proposed by Egypt and Libya. Italy’s ambassador, spokesman of the “Friends of IGAD” group of countries, announced his country’s intention to host a fresh round of talks between the SPLA and the Sudanese Government in the new year.