Sudan starts historic vote amid confusion, delays

KHARTOUM/JUBA (Reuters) – Confusion, delays and  charges of fraud marked the start of Sudan’s first multi-party  elections in a quarter-century, a vote that will test the  fragile unity of Africa’s biggest country.  

The three-day election could also show whether Sudan can  avoid more conflict and humanitarian crises as it heads toward a  2011 referendum on independence for the oil-producing south.  

The results are widely expected to keep Sudan’s two most  influential men in power: President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who  faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court  for allegedly planning war crimes in the western Darfur region,  and Silva Kiir, who leads largely autonomous south Sudan.
  
Across the country, there were long queues and chaotic  scenes outside polling centres. Kiir was forced to wait 20  minutes under a tree for his polling station to open in the  southern capital Juba and then spoiled his first ballot by  putting it in the wrong box. 
 
Would-be voters lined up in the morning in Khartoum, where  police were out in force on unusually quiet streets. Many voters  were hindered by delays in getting ballots to polling stations,  ballot mix-ups and names missing from the electoral roll.  

But by yesterday afternoon, no major unrest was reported as  people voted to choose a national president, a leader of south  Sudan, national and local parliaments, and governors of all but  one of the country’s 25 states. 
 
Yet the elections’ credibility was undermined even before  voting started, as leading opposition parties pulled out  candidates and blamed the government for widespread vote-rigging  and intimidation. Election officials, trying to plan a complex  election for the first time in a generation, denied the charges.