No rescheduling for elections, Sudan president says

The Sudanese president and head of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) Omer Hassan Al-Bashir emphasized today that elections will be held on time despite mounting calls by opposition groups that they be postponed.
He said that the western region of Darfur is now secure and stable which eliminates any justification for postponing the elections, noting that the 1986 polls were not delayed due to the war in the South.
The SPLM has vehemently refused any move to postpone the referendum process and many think tank groups fear a return to civil war should the self determination process be disrupted. However, many post-referendum issues have yet to be addressed particularly nationality, national debt, water agreement with the border demarcation process well behind schedule.
http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article34252

So elections will take place at planned date. Anyways, it was almost impossible to postpound those elections. This even if the process to educate the population in South is absolutely not fully completed…

Sudan’s NCP says committed to implementing Islamic law

Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party (NCP) reiterated its position on implementing Islamic Shari’a law in the country as part of its elections programme.
This week at a meeting between NCP and Sudan People Liberation Movement (SPLM) in Cairo hosted by the Egyptian government discussed the issue of Islamic law implementation. Both sides were deadlocked on their stances with SPLM calling for a secular state.
But the Sudanese Undersecretary of Foreign affairs Mutrif Sideeg and member of the NCP delegation said that this position is not negotiable.
“We will not abandon our Shari’a nor do we call on the others to accept what they do not accept. We accepted the principle that citizenship is the basis of rights and duties, and we have accepted the principle of unity in diversity, and therefore will not commit others to what we are committed to. We do not accept that the others void our personality, religion and identity under any circumstances,” he said.
Currently semi-autonomous South Sudan is excluded from the application of Islamic law but observers say that this has deepened the rift between North and the South and diminished hopes of making unity attractive in the 2011 referendum.
http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article34253


Well, the question of imposing Sharia has been one of the many trigger of the South Sudan war. But in that case, it is definitevely the Sudan Unity policy that is targetted.
South will never accept and North will never drop it. But those NCP is targetting are the international community.
Unity is attractive basically for none of the sudanese but partition is not attractive for Sudan’s neightbors nor the international community. This mainly due to the SPLM poor management of the South. (When you have to choose between pest and cholera…). By putting Sharia high on the sunlight, NCP is just causing problems to western powers.
On one hand, they sign a peace agreement for Darfur to please West, on the other hand they spoil West hopes to have Sudan remaining united by promoting Sharia…

I really wonder how North will be able to conduct another double front war in 2012/2013… Or even before. Imposing Sharia is also a great opportunity for North to avoid 2012 referedum. If Bashir is re elected (And he will surely be) and he really goes hard on imposing Sharia in the whole country (North and South), this will definitevely be concidered as a casus belli by South. (And also as a grave breach in the CPA). Then no referendum, an immediat partition and a war that South is not necerely ready to fight at that point of time. And this despite rushing to arm itself.