Sudan VP Opts to Run for Southern Presidency

Sudanese Vice President Salva Kiir has chosen to run for the presidency of the country’s semi-autonomous instead of challenging national President Omar al-Bashir in elections due in April.

Instead, Kiir’s former rebel Sudan People Liberation Movement (SPLM) has fronted Yasir Arman, a Muslim from the north, as its candidate to face Bashir. Arman joined the SPLM during the civil war. He is currently its pointman in the north and serves as the leader of the SPLM parliamentary group in the national parliament.

Analysts see Kiir’s decision as an indication of the SPLM’s priority to ensure that the South votes for secession in an independence referendum scheduled for 2011.

Kiir is currently serving as Sudan’s first Vice-President and President of South Sudan in line with a 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that needed a two-decade year civil war pitting the SPLM against Khartoum. [PE]