SPLM to cooperate with Sudan’s NCP despite rigging claim

The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement will cooperate with the ruling National Congress Party in order to “avoid war”, according to the party’s presidential candidate. The party continues to claim that NCP rigged the elections in the North. SPLM has not yet publicly agreed to form a coalition government with the NCP, as elsewhere reported, although this remains a possibility.

Yasir Arman, deputy secretary general of SPLM and presidential candidate, said “we don’t want to go back to war”. He told the radio service Voice of America that cooperation with NCP was necessary to implement the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

Asked whether the SPLM would accept the results of the general elections, Arman said “We have to deal with them not as people having legitimacy but as people who came by de facto”. He noted that the international community “accepts the rigging of the elections in the North”.

Earlier this week a senior NCP figure downplayed talk of a unity government. Dr. Amin Hassan Omar, Minister of State at the Ministry of Culture and Information, told Radio Dabanga that any talk of forming a unity government was premature. But like Arman, he asserted that a new national government needs to be formed to fulfill CPA requirements, resolve the Darfur problem, and create development. A broad-based government based on the gains of the parties in the elections is possible, he said, adding that the ruling party could find a way to include even those parties that had no wins in the elections. Amin Hassan Omar is the government’s top negotiator at the Doha peace talks with the rebels.