60 percent of Southern Sudan has voted

Southern Sudan needed 60 percent of its people to vote in the freedom referendum. The commission in charge of the vote says that they surpassed that mark yesterday. The 60 percent figure is what the commission needed for the result to be considered valid internationally.

From Bloomberg Business Week, Matt Richmond has more on the announcement.

“We are already above the threshold of 60 percent yesterday,” Chan Reec Madut told reporters today in Juba, the capital of the semi-autonomous region. More than 2.3 million people already voted, he said, and the commission has received no reports of security problems.

The week-long referendum in Southern Sudan entered its fifth day today, as lines at voting booths started to thin out. The plebiscite is the centerpiece of a 2005 peace agreement that ended Sudan’s two-decade civil war, in which about 2 million people died.

The result is set to be announced by Feb. 14, according to the commission. Southern Sudan’s independence, 54 years after the end of British rule in Sudan, would be declared in July.