Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Beshir scored overwhelming victories in a sample of results from national elections marred by fraud accusations and boycotts, state media reported Sunday. Both European Union and Carter Center observers have said last week's elections did not meet international standards, but stopped short of echoing opposition allegations of widespread rigging. Sudanese independent and opposition papers Sunday slammed the country's elections as a sham, urging the world not recognize the result of the vote they say will only preserve the status quo. The polls, set up under a 2005 peace deal that ended two decades of north-south civil war, were supposed to help transform the troubled oil-producing nation into a democracy. Beshir won between 70-92 percent of votes cast in around 35 scattered polling centers, foreign voting posts and one state, the state Suna news agency reported. The figures have not been confirmed by the National Elections Commission and represent a fraction of the country. A senior official from Beshir's dominant National Congress Party said he was expecting similar results across Sudan. “This victory is a real victory - the counting of the votes took place under the sun, not in a dark room. The observers saw everything,” Rabie Abdelati said. Opposition groups said the huge majorities proved their accusations that the NCP had rigged the vote in the north, justifying the decision of many of them to boycott. Beshir was always likely to win the presidency after most of his main rivals, including candidates from the opposition Umma party and south Sudan's dominant Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), pulled out of the race alleging fraud. The president of Sudan's semi-autonomous south and SPLM leader Salva Kiir is also likely to win the vote to keep his job, maintaining the status quo as the country prepares for a referendum on southern secession in January 2011.
