SPLM's Kiir to run for south Sudan president

JUBA, Sudan (Reuters) Sudan's First Vice President Salva Kiir will run for president of south Sudan in April elections, leaving the post of national presidency to be contested by a lower-ranking northern member of his party.

Analysts said the decision by Kiir, the head of the southern former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), would be seen as a signal that southern politicians had prioritised running the semi-autonomous south, which many believe will secede when it votes in an independence poll in less than a year.

Many had predicted Kiir to remain as president in the oil-producing south, having spent little time in Khartoum, despite becoming Sudan President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's deputy in 2005 when a north-south peace deal ended two decades of civil war.

The fighting claimed 2 million lives, drove 4 million from their homes and destabilised much of east Africa.

"The SPLM nominee for the position of President of the Republic is Yasir Saeed Arman and the nominee for the President of Southern Sudan is the Chairman of the SPLM Salva Kiir," SPLM Secretary-General Pagan Amum told Reuters on Friday.

Maggie Fick of the U.S.-based Enough Project said the nominations would be seen as a signal that the SPLM's priorities are in the south.

"It is difficult not to read it that way," she said.

Since the SPLM formed a coalition government with their one-time northern foes, the National Congress Party, Arman has been the face of his party in Khartoum, heading the party's parliamentary group and largely playing the role of spokesman.

Kiir has shown little interest in the affairs of the north, intervening only when delays in implementing the peace deal reached crisis level, earning him the title of "vice absent" rather than first vice president.

"We want Kiir to continue being the president of the south to take the people of the south to the referendum ... Yasir Arman is a long term SPLM cadre and a capable leader and our best candidate," Amum added.

Although the 2005 north-south peace deal was signed under the slogan of making unity attractive, little has been implemented with good will, fuelling mistrust among southerners of the northern government they had long accused of oppression.

A Muslim who joined the rebels over disillusionment with a succession of military, corrupt and dictatorial Khartoum governments, Arman will run against fellow Muslim Bashir.

Bashir hopes to legitimise his position after the International Criminal Court last year issued a warrant for his arrest for war crimes during a counter-insurgency campaign in Sudan's western Darfur region.

The SPLM was likely to choose a northerner to run for the presidency as few in the mainly Muslim north would vote for a Christian southerner. The imposition of sharia, Islamic law in 1983 fuelled the rebellion by southerners who follow mostly traditional beliefs or Christianity.

With millions of southerners who fled the war to seek refuge in the north and hundreds of thousands of northerners who have shown support for the SPLM, Arman may be a leading candidate for the presidency.

The elections promise democratic transformation, but with one of the most complex electoral systems in the world and the opposition accusing the ruling NCP of fraud in the registration process, few are optimistic Sudan will see real change.

(Writing by Opheera McDoom; Editing by Matthew Jones)

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