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“You want to vote for unity so that you become a second class in your own country, that is your choice,” said Kiir. |
KHARTOUM – In a major rift with the Khartoum government, South Sudan President Salva Kiir has publicly called for the largely Christian region to secede from the country.
"When you reach your ballot boxes the choice is yours,” Kiir told a congregation in a cathedral in the capital Juba, reported the BBC News Online on Sunday, November 1.
“You want to vote for unity so that you become a second class in your own country, that is your choice,” said Kiir, who is also Sudan’s First Vice-President.
"If you want to vote for independence so that you are a free person in your independent state, that will be your own choice and we will respect the choice of the people."
Southern Sudanese will vote in a referendum in 2011 on whether to secede from the Muslim north.
The referendum is part of the 2005 north-south peace deal, which ended a two-decade civil war between the north and south.
The accord established an interim period, with a coalition government between the Muslim north and mostly Christian south and the sharing of oil wealth.
Kiir’s remarks came as the Sudanese began on Sunday to register for their country’s first presidential, legislative and regional elections in 24 years.
"Voter registration has started across Sudan," the head of the elections commission, Al-Hadi Mohammed Ahmed, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Sudanese voters have a month to register for the April polls and the authorities have set up both fixed and mobile registration centres across the country.
The elections will be the first in Sudan since 1986, three years before President Omar al-Beshir came to power in a bloodless coup.
The elections were originally scheduled to be held in July this year under the 2005 peace deal, but were pushed back to April 2010.
Tension
The ruling Sudanese National Congress Party (NCP) regretted Kiir’s call for secession.
"My understanding is that these remarks contradict the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, according to which priority must be given to unity," NCP official Mandour al-Mahdi said in a statement cited by official SUNA news agency.
He said the southerners enjoy equal rights like other Sudanese citizens.
“They are occupying the highest seats in the country,” he said, citing Kiir’s post of the First Vice-President.
Southern Sudan's vice president Riek Machar said Kiir’s statements were not a change in southern policy.
"It is an expression of how south Sudanese people are getting frustrated," he told the Associated Press.
"People want to see the peace dividends, the country reconciling and development."
The secession call will add to the already troubled relationship between the NCP and Kiir’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM).
Both sides promised to build up a campaign to make the unity of Sudan attractive to voters when they signed the 2005 peace deal.
But their relationship has strained amid SPLM accusations of the NCP of procrastinating to meet their obligations under the 2005 deal.
SPLM has boycotted parliament to pressure the ruling party to submit a schedule for a series of bills that would reform the powerful intelligence services, a key demand ahead of the election.
Northern and southern officials have agreed on how to stage the 2011 referendum but southern officials accuse Khartoum of arming ethnic militias in the south to destabilise the region ahead of the vote.
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