Opposition parties that boycotted Sudanese elections charged the results were rigged, in remarks published Saturday, after President Omar al-Bashir securely won another five-year term in office.
Bashir won 86.5 percent of the vote for president with over two thirds of voters turning up to cast their ballots, according to official results given Friday, while the opposition claimed less than 10 percent had bothered voting.
"It is a meaningless farce that does not give the regime any legitimacy as the election was boycotted and unrecognized by the people," Umma Party spokeswoman Sara Nugdallah was quoted by Khartoum newspapers as saying.
There had been "much fraudulence," she said.
Nugdullah said the boycott by her party and all the other main opposition groups, which won most of the votes in the last multi-party election in 1986, had worked and that turnout had been much lower than officially reported.
Western diplomats said the government was hoping for enough people to vote in the 10-day presidential and parliamentary poll to show it had some popular support.
Complete parliamentary results were still being awaited Saturday, although the vast majority of seats already declared have been won by Bashir's ruling National Congress (NC) party.
Officials of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the Popular National Congress (PNC) also charged that the results had been rigged -- KHARTOUM (AFP)
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