Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir scored overwhelming victories in a sample of results from national elections marred by fraud accusations and boycotts, state media reported on Sunday, according to Reuters. 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. The presidential and legislative 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. Bashir won between 70-92 percent of votes cast in presidential ballots in around 35 scattered polling centres, foreign voting posts and one state, said state news agency Suna. Those figures represent a fraction of the country and have not been confirmed by authorities. Separately, Sudan's National Elections Commission announced the first official results of the contest on Sunday -- eight state assembly seats from north Sudan's River Nile state that all went to Bashir's National Congress Party (NCP) with big majorities. Senior NCP official Rabie Abdelati told Reuters 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," he 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 the opposition parties to boycott. "This proves what we said: that this election is false from A to Z. It was planned from the beginning," said Farouk Abu Issa, spokesman for a loose coalition of opposition groups. "If he thinks that being re-elected by a big majority will protect him from the International Criminal Court, he is mistaken." he added. -- SPA
