Bashir might consider a two-state referendum result as a viable future for Sudan
Residents in Juba were in a friendly mood yesterday concerning the visit of President Bashir, who is expected to arrive in Juba this morning. The Residents who were interviewed here said that even if his regime did not consider Southerners as equal to their brothers in the North, it is the first Khartoum-based government to accept, though painfully, the right of the people of Southern Sudan to self-determination in 2011.
\"We welcome him as president and he should facilitate the referendum [...].\"
Although the President is a staunch unionist, he is expected to abandon the unity trail eventually, backing secession as the common choice of the people of the South. \"We welcome him as President and he should facilitate the referendum; referendum is not war, referendum is for freedom,\" Peter Lado, resident of Konyo Konyo, a suburb in Juba, said yesterday. \"We want him to tell the people that we stayed with them for long, but this is not the time to continue.\"
However, despite having accepted the right for the people of Southern Sudan to self-determination in the 2005 peace deal and eventually incorporating it into the constitution, the regime is viewed as having missed once more an opportunity to keep Africa\'s largest country united. \"If he [Bashir] was a good thinker, he would have directed all the oil money to the development of the South and we would have been ready for unity,\" Simon Olera, a resident of Nyakuron suburb said.
\"We civilians only want he who brings us development.\"
Several residents of this suburb indicated that the president should visit the local areas to discover their dire needs: Clean water, good schools, hospitals, and jobs, which they think would be attained only if the South secedes from the North. \"We civilians only want he who brings us development. Even if a white man, we welcome him and obey,\" Clement Oriang, a seller of utensils at custom market said.
Legislators also see Bashir\'s visit, which comes barely four days before the referendum on possible independence of the South, as his last visit as the united country\'s leader. Interviews conducted earlier among the regional legislators revealed that they expect the president to commit to good relations between the two would-be nations. He is also expected to find an acceptable solution to the contested land status of the nine Dinka-Ngok chiefdoms that were transferred by a presidential decree to Southern Kordofan in 1905.
In his address on the country\'s disputed Independence Day on 1 January, Bashir reiterated that he would accept the result of the Southern Sudan referendum and work towards stability of the potential two-nation scenario. However, with a lot of suspicion from the majority of Southerners, Bashir\'s commitment to his pledges as president now remains a test of time.
