The coalition is set to appoint a common candidate to challenge Sudanese President ‘Umar Al-Bashir in the upcoming poll.
General elections have not been held in Sudan since 1986, when Sadiq Al-Mahdi’s Umma party briefly took power for three years. A coup d’etat in 1989 then brought Al-Bashir to power.
In a presidential election Bashir secured 86% of votes but the polls were boycotted by the opposition.
Representatives of the new alliance say its participation in the upcoming elections will be dependent upon a loosening of laws restricting freedom of expression and the press. A spokesman claimed that the opposition retained the right to resist the lack of democracy. He did not elaborate.
“The formation of the new alliance will have a significant impact on the political situation as it will put pressure on the government to legislate new media freedoms” Abdallah Adam Khatir, a Sudanese journalist based in Khartoum, told The Media Line.
Opposition groups have been increasingly critical of the Bashir administration for its handling of the conflict in the country’s western Darfur region, which has raged unabated since local rebel groups rose up against the central government in 2003.
The government has been accused of actively supporting the mass killings of Black African’s in the Darfur region by armed gangs of Arab locals called the Janjaweed.
International aid agencies say more than 300,000 people have been killed and 2.7 million displaced in what some governments are calling genocide. The Sudanese government claims the death toll is closer to 10,000.
Earlier this year the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Al-Bashir on counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
The 108 countries which are party to the Rome Statute are obliged to arrest Al-Bashir if he sets foot on their territory.
The arrest warrant, the first ever to be issued against a sitting head of state, was a caution to Al-Bashir that the international community was willing to take drastic measures to end the conflict.
Meanwhile, rebels from the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), the largest rebel group in northern Sudan, have launched an attack on a military base in the city of Umm Baru in northern Darfur. The attack was the second on the base in less then week, and some reports claimed more than 60 people were killed over eight hours of fighting.
Earlier this month JEM fighters took control of a government army base in Kornoi, northern Darfur.