January 19, 2011 (KHARTOUM) – The authority in charge of south Sudan referendum on independence has announced that the majority of votes counted so far inside Sudan and in the Diaspora have favored the option of secession from the north.

SSRC Chairperson Mohamed Ibrahim Khalil (SUNA website)

In contrast, the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission (SSRC) has also announced that votes for unity in South Darfur State have outnumbered votes for secession.

Nearly four million registered voters of the semi-autonomous region of south Sudan went to the polls on 9 January and casted their ballots to choose between remaining united with north Sudan or seceding to form an independent state.

The polls closed on 15 January amid reports of high turnout in the south and a notably low one in the north. A turnout of 60% registered voters is required to validate the result while the simple majority of 50% plus 1 will determine the outcome.

Suuad Ibrahim Issa, SSRC’s official spokeswoman, on Wednesday told Sudan’s official news agency SUNA that only 69, 597 voters out of 116,857 registered voters had participated in the referendum in north Sudan’s states. She went on to say that 27,918 of them voted for unity (41.11%) while 38,003 voted for secession (%54.60).

But according to the commission’s spokeswoman, votes for unity have preponderated in South Darfur State. The state is the runner-up to Khartoum State in terms of the number of registered voters in northern states with 20, 165 registrants, according to the commission’s website.

Suad said that 59.43% of registered voters in south Darfur voted for unity whereas 34.59% opted for secession.

South Darfur State shares borders with Northern and Western Bahr el Ghazal states in south Sudan.

Furth more, the spokeswoman announced that 58,203 voters in the Diaspora out of the 60,219 who registered had overwhelmingly opted for secession, breaking down the figures as 57, 048 (98.02%) votes for secession and only 841 votes.

The referendum was also conducted in eight Out-of-Country Voting (OCV) locations, including Uganda, Kenya, Australia, Canada, Egypt, Ethiopia, Uganda, the UK and the US.

Official preliminary results of the referendum are due to be announced in early February and final results will be announced on 14 February, according to SSRC timetable.

In a similar vein, the higher referendum commission in Western Bahr el Ghazal state on Wednesday announced that preliminary results show that 95% of registrants had voted for secession while the rest of the votes are divided between unity, invalid and unmarked ballots.

South Sudan referendum is a key plank of a 2005’s peace deal that ended nearly half a century of intermittent civil wars between the predominantly Muslim-Arab north and the south where most people ascribe to Christianity or traditional beliefs and identify themselves as Africans.

(ST)