U.S. and European media

April 12, 2023

BBC: Sudan's landmark polls off to an uncertain start. Voting in Sudan's first multi-party elections in 24 years has started for a second day amid reports of confusion and disarray in many regions. While the process generally went well in the capital Khartoum, voters faced obstacles in several states from the Red Sea in the north to the far south. The dominant party in the south is calling for a four-day extension.

Radio Dabanga: Few voters in Darfur, first election day in Sudan very quiet. Voter turnout is very low in Khartoum, says one of Radio Dabanga's correspondents, and there is heavy presence of police in the streets. In South Sudan people started to come to the ballot box after midday. Many first had attended church services. The polling will continue through Monday and Tuesday. 

AP: Darfur key for al-Bashir in Sudan elections. President Omar al-Bashir is pushing hard for a win in war-torn Darfur in Sudan's key elections this weekend, hoping for a boost in his legitimacy in the face of international war crimes accusations. But he faces a hostile population in a vote observers say is deeply flawed.

AP: Sudan extends election by 2 days. udan's election commission announced Monday it was extending voting by two more days to ensure technical problems will not prevent anyone from participating. The three-day election had been scheduled to run from Sunday through Tuesday. But Salah Habib, spokesman for the Sudanese National Election Commission, said the final day of voting will now be Thursday. Sudanese election monitors have complained that voting has not even begun in some parts of the country, including semiautonomous southern Sudan. There are also reports that some voting stations were moved without notice, voter registries or other crucial equipment is missing and observers have not been allowed in to witness the process.

PBS NewsHour: In South Sudan, Vote to Secede Looms. Residents of southern Sudan, an area that is already semi-autonomous, will vote in January on whether to separate from the north. But many issues -- from how to distribute oil wealth to even where the border would be drawn -- still must be resolved.

The following piece by Sean Brooks was featured in Al Jazeera English: Legitimising Khartoum."Things will be different after the elections," asserted Ghazi Salahuddin, Sudan's presidential advisor and chief interlocutor with the US, at the end of a meeting with a delegation from the Save Darfur Coalition of which I was part in February. He expressed confidently to us that the national elections - the first multi-party elections in Sudan since 1986 - would fundamentally change Sudanese politics for the better. Since that day, the credibility of the elections has been called into question by the withdrawal of candidates and the boycott of a number of opposition parties. Rather than serving as a step forward in the long road to peace and democracy, many Sudanese now fear what a newly emboldened regime in Khartoum may mean for the country.

The Darfur Daily News is a service of the Save Darfur Coalition. To subscribe to the Daily News, please email [email protected]. For media inquiries, please contact Ashley Roberts at (202) 478-6181, or [email protected].