Key Sudanese presidential hopeful Yassir Arman has pulled out of this month’s vote, leaving the way clear for a first-round win by Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir unless the opposition finds a single candidate.
The move, announced by Arman’s former rebel group, came on Wednesday after Bashir ruled out deferring the first multi-party polls in 24 years.
“I took the decision to withdraw for two reasons. Firstly, after having campaigned in Darfur, I realized that it was impossible to hold elections there due to the current state of emergency,” Arman said yesterday.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“Secondly, there are irregularities in the electoral process, which is rigged,” he said.
Emphasizing that his fight would continue despite his pullout from the race, Arman said: “President Bashir is a burden for Sudan and for his own party. He’s been leading Sudan for over 20 years. That’s enough.”
Bashir had told a political rally in Damazin, the capital of the Blue Nile state: “The elections will not be postponed or cancelled. They will take place on time.”
“Our partner [in the government], the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement [SPLM], agrees with us,” that the presidential, legislative and municipal elections should be held as planned on April 11 through April 13, Bashir said.
A few hours later, however, an SPLM party official dropped the bombshell and announced that Arman was quitting the race.
He said, however, that the SPLM would present candidates to regional and legislative elections “across Sudan, except for Darfur.”
Arman, 49, a secular Muslim from North Sudan, was selected in January by his former rebel group to challenge Bashir in this month’s presidential election and was regarded as a leading candidate.
His withdrawal means Bashir is assured of re-election in the first round of voting, unless the opposition parties, which were scheduled to meet yesterday to decide whether to boycott the election, can come up with a single candidate.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
‘PLAINLY ERRONEOUS’: The justice department appealed a Trump-appointed judge’s blocking of the release of a report into election interference by the incoming president US Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal cases against US president-elect Donald Trump on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and mishandling of classified documents, has resigned after submitting his investigative report on Trump, an expected move that came amid legal wrangling over how much of that document can be made public in the days ahead. The US Department of Justice disclosed Smith’s departure in a footnote of a court filing on Saturday, saying he had resigned one day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump is inaugurated, follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions
RSS