Vote on Secession in Sudan Comes to a Close

JUBA, Sudan — After the last voters in southern Sudan’s weeklong election on independence had trickled to the polls and cast their ballots, the polls closed and electoral officials quietly got down to the business of tallying the results. While a small crowd gathered at the memorial for the liberation leader John Garang, some bowing at his tomb, the counting was expected to carry on through the night.

Sudanese officials said that voter turnout in the referendum had surpassed the 60 percent threshold needed for the vote to be valid, with 83 percent — more than three million people — voting in the south. The numbers in the largely Muslim north, from which the Christian and animist south is expected to break away, were lower, but still more than half, the officials said.

Across the globe, including in the United States, where 8,789 Sudanese expatriatesregistered to vote, turnout was more than 90 percent.

“All indications show that the result will lean toward separation,” said Mohammed Ibrahim Khalil, the chairman of the referendum commission, here in Juba, the southern capital.

The vote on independence is the capstone of a peace treaty that brought nearly 50 years of civil war to an end. President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan had made some last-minute efforts to keep the country united, but has gradually given in to the inevitability of southern independence.

The first preliminary results in the vote are expected to be posted outside each of the nearly 3,000 polling stations as soon as each station is finished counting its ballots. Preliminary results for all of Sudan are expected on Jan. 31, and official results on Feb. 14.

But it is unclear whether those deadlines will be met.

For instance, voting has been extended for five days in Australia because of devastating floods, referendum officials said.

The bulk of voters turned out early in the week, from soldiers to students to a convict on death row. In one instance, a woman in labor who had decided to vote before going to the hospital to give birth ended up delivering her baby at the polling center.

But at the memorial in Juba, one of the last voters, listening to headphones and blowing a vuvuzela, danced into the booth, hoping to cast the final ballot.

“I am the last one to say no way for unity,” called out Langa Lafa, a graduate student, bopping his head. “I am the last one to say the door is closed.”

As he strutted out of the booth, a referendum official grabbed him by the arm, leading him back inside so he could finish steps in the procedure he had excitedly forgotten.