My read would be that the people who are prepared to say that something could go wrong are not well tolerated. Immediately after the resignation yesterday morning came a law from the southern Sudanese government detailing the dates of the registration period and the referendum period that are extremely optimistic.
You have a population in the south of somewhere between 8 million and 16 million. That's already problematic; I would probably suggest it's somewhere between 10.5 million and 12 million. Sudan as a whole is the size of Quebec and Ontario combined. Southern Sudan, which is the Ontario equivalent in size terms, has possibly as much as 100 kilometres of paved road. How on earth are you going to do a registration of voters there, and in Canada, and in Ethiopia, and in the U.S., and in the U.K., and in northern Sudan, in six days, which has now been extended to 17 days? Even so, how realistic is that, and how realistic then is a referendum in six days, from January 9 to January 15?
I think one thing, and it relates to some of the comments my colleagues have brought up earlier, is the very limited way in which the National Congress Party in the north and the SPLM actually represent the people. So they've certainly come to a point where the SPLM hasn't done any kind of voter education, or any kind of public information, or any kind of managing of expectations.
When you talk to ordinary men on the street in the south, they think that on January 10, 2011, the Arab occupation will have ceased. There's this massive expectation for wholesale change without really being able to clarify what that change would bring, how it would make things different on the ground. Because there's been no management of expectations and because the SPLM realizes it's going to have to become more accountable if it loses the north--it's not going to have that common enemy that keeps it together in the same way--it's going to have to become more accountable to citizens, especially in the margins of the country. It can only do that by forcing the referendum to be on time.