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alshahid

Khartoum (Alshahid) – Sudanese political parties addressed supporters on Friday on the last day of general election campaigning, as President Omar al-Bashir, looking assured of re-election, makes a final push for parliamentary seats.

“We will build roads to Geneina (in west Sudan). We have built a road that reaches the border of Ethiopia (in the east) … We are not focused on just one region, we are working for balanced development,” Bashir told a rally in Dalgo, north Sudan.

“People ask ‘why are you launching all these projects today?’ We say they are solid projects; it is not publicity. It is our duty to offer services to our people,” he said in an address carried by private TV channels.

Bashir’s resources have allowed him to stage rallies in all corners of the country, which drew the ire of opposition parties who accused him of dipping into state funds for his personal bid.

The 66-year-old Bashir is counting on the landmark elections to redeem his stature but the credibility of the election has been marred by a boycott of a significant part of the opposition.

SPLM said it would not field candidates in the northern states, except in the sensitive Blue Nile and south Kordofan, after it said it was withdrawing its presidential candidate, Yasser Arman, from the race.

The Umma Party also announced a boycott of the election, with leader Sadiq al-Mahdi refusing to run against Bashir.

Hatim al-Sir, of the opposition Democratic Unionist Party, who has now become Bashir’s main challenger though his chances of beating Bashir are very slim, is to meet supporters later on Friday in the Nile state in north Sudan.

But Sir is hoping to push for the legislative and local elections which remain fiercely competitive in large parts of the country.

Bashir’s National Congress Party currently controls 52 percent of the 450-seat National Assembly and is hoping to maintain its support in the north, the south being dominated by the SPLM.

The current south Sudan leader and head of the SPLM, Salva Kiir, is to address a rally in Juba, the southern capital, later on Friday.

In a bid to quell accusations of fraud, Bashir who has ruled Africa’s largest country since 1989, promised free and fair elections at a rally on Thursday.

“Unfortunately the trends on the ground are very disturbing,” Susan Rice the US envoy to the United Nations told reporters on Thursday.

She said a decision by the European Union to withdraw observers from Darfur underscored “how insecure and problematic the electoral process is in that portion of the country and elsewhere.”

Former US president Jimmy Carter arrived in Khartoum on Thursday as election monitors from his Carter Center prepare for the three-day process.

“We are hoping and praying that it will be a fair and honest election for those (who) are participating,” Carter told reporters.

“I regret that some parties have decided not to participate,” Carter said, underlining, however, that “there are around 16,000 candidates who are still involved in the election” on all levels.