Events Archive
Elections Watch at PAO Residence Wins Sudanese Vote of Approval
Embassy Khartoum PAO’s residence had more the feel of election central on November 8 as approximately 25 local journalists, academics, and college students, as well as a Sudanese government elections official, mingled with U.S. Embassy personnel to watch a broadcast of the U.S. Midterm Elections. Arabic and English print media representatives, including columnists and political writers for some of the prominent dailies like “Al Rai Al-Aam,” “Al-Sahafa,” and “Khartoum Monitor,” took copious notes of the proceedings. Some of the scribes even excused themselves before the end of the two-hour event saying they needed to go file their stories.
Meanwhile, male and female students from the University of Khartoum, University of Juba, Al-Zaiem Al-Azhari University, and Al-Nilein University took notes of their own for their political science courses. Their professors, including some graduates of U.S. universities, asked a barrage of important questions about the elections mostly concerning the U.S. foreign policy implications of the Democrats’ victory in the House (Iraq, Middle East peace, Sudan). One academic was keen to learn more about the process of selecting replacements for members of Congress who leave office in the middle of their terms.
A key guest was the Sudanese elections official, a Penn State alumni who had recently returned to Khartoum after serving as an African Union elections observer in Congo-Brazzaville. In two years’ time, Sudan will hold its own elections, so the U.S. Midterm Elections represented one of the last opportunities for the Mission to organize this type of programming with a spectrum of Sudanese opinion leaders.
The guests greatly appreciated the assortment of Arabic and English printed materials from the State Department on elections and democracy. The Arabic version of the publication, "Making U.S. Foreign Policy," was especially popular with students, journalists, and academics