Social Science Research Council

Today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the popular uprising that brought down the dictatorship of President Jaafar Nimeiri, setting the stage for Sudan’s last multi-party elections exactly a year later. It was a model non-violent people’s revolution.
The intifada was an extraordinary organizational feat. The prime movers were trade unions and professional associations. Although some army [...]

“Even America is becoming an NCP member. No one is against our will”,
President Omer Albashir, in Sinar, Blue Nile City rally, 3 April 2010
Yesterday the African Union, under the leadership of former Ghanaian President John Kufuor, dispatched the final members of its 50 person strong team to monitor the elections in [...]

Democrats today, facing autocratic governments, have an advantage over their predecessors of ten or twenty years ago. Political scientists have studied transitions from authoritarianism and there are many lessons that can be learned from around the world—and applied. Dictators’ political engineers are surely learning too, so the democrats should try at least to be a [...]

A few months ago, when I posted my article “10 Good Reasons Why Sudan is Destined to Chaos”, in which I have anticipated the possibility that holding the elections and the referendum, at all, might not be possible unless the issues of concern are properly addressed, and in a timely manner, many views on the [...]

A senior member of a Sudanese opposition party, was present at the meeting of the leaders of the Juba Alliance in which the issue of boycotting the elections was discussed at length. From the meeting he knew precisely where each of the parties stood: which were for contesting the elections, which were for comprehensive boycott, [...]

The Political Parties Council for southern Sudan was officially launched in Juba today.
In his introductory remarks, Vice President of the Government of Southern Sudan, Riek Machar, noted the importance of the Political Parties Council, and also said,
“We have just arrived from Khartoum. We have been involved in a lot of activities pertaining to the election [...]

The ongoing debate about whether the April election should be postponed or not has entered a new phase, as the Presidency will discuss it on Tuesday, and according to the outcome of that meeting, the Juba Alliance will meet and decide whether to boycott the election or not, depending on [...]

The coming election in Sudan is one of the most complicated elections in the world. In the north people have to vote eight times and twelve times in the south, that in a country with around 70% rate of illiteracy.
I have been studying the new electoral system in Sudan for the last two [...]

On the eve of the elections, a new report by the Rift Valley Institute explains Sudan’s electoral system, analyses errors in constituency demarcation and warns of potential obstacles to the electoral process. The report highlights the strengths and shortcomings of the new system and its effects on the distribution of power in Sudan.

View the report [...]

Further to my posting yesterday, I am excerpting a few lines from President Buyoya’s speech to the summit of political parties in southern Sudan on 1 March:
“During the long years of war, the people of southern Sudan demonstrated that they could never be ruled against their will, and that the destiny of southern Sudan lies [...]