Kizza Besigye during one of his presidential election rallies.Uganda is preparing itself for tomorrow’s presidential and parliamentary elections. Schools and other public buildings are closing to function as voting stations all over the country.

Much speculation is circulating about problems surrounding tomorrow's events. The Daily Monitor is concerned that "the National Voters Register to be used for tomorrow’s presidential and parliamentary elections likely contains 139,541 dead persons, more than half a million “unknown people” and 1.9 million voters who have since changed location...". 

Presidential candidate Kizza Besigye, of current president Musevini's main opposition party, says he will accept defeat and congratulate the new president-elect, but only if he has lost in a free and fair election.

Concerns for the legitimacy of these elections are high, just like the 2006 and 2001 elections.

Supporters of Besigye, leader of the main opposition party the Forum for Democratic Change.On the 18th of February 2011, the people of Uganda will vote for a new president to run their country for the next five years.

President Yoweri Museveni has been in power for the past 25 years and intends to run for president again in a few weeks time. His party is the National Resistance Movement (NMR). 

The main opposition to Museveni is Kizza Besigye, leader of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC). Besigye ran in the 2001 and 2006 elections as well. He is now considered favourite to win the elections on February 18th; however there are still disputes as to whether Museveni will finally relinquish his power should he lose the elections.

For the regions in Uganda where IRT is most active (mainly in the north of the country) this is going to be a crucial moment in history, as the divide between the north and the south of the country is greater than ever. The south is much more developed and much richer than the north. The north of the country suffered for over two decades from brutal violence by the Lord's Resistance Army. Now that there is peace in the region, re-development needs to become a main priority. The next government will have to check misuse of public funds as well as foreign aid. This is the only way Ugandans can hope to have good roads, drugs and health workers in hospitals, access to clean water and sanitation, teachers in classes among other critical areas that need urgent attention.

Children sitting down for lunch. They are refugees from violent eastern DR Congo. Will they meet more violence here in southern Sudan after the referendum results are announced?Although the official results of the Sudanese Referendum for independence are yet to be announced, preliminary figures collected by the news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) have shown that the vast majority of southern Sudanese voters have opted for the option to become independent from the Sudanese North.

The Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir pledged that he would respect the decision of the people should the vote result in a North/South split of the nation. However, the much disputed province of Abeyie may prove to be an obstacle in the implementation of the Sudanese Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). The region contains most of Sudan's oil fields and there has been no clear agreement which part of the two new nations will have the right to these oil fields after the secession.

Another worry is that once South Sudan is an independent state inter-tribal tension will rise and a new civil war may break out all together.

However, from our local partners in Wau and Nzara in southern Sudan, we understand that the people are optimistic and looking forward to a future without the North. One of our concerns here at IRT is for the many refugees and internally displaced people who fled from existing war zones such as the DR Congo and the state of Darfur and will now potentially end up in a new conflict. We will keep you up-dated with any other accounts they send our way.

Sudan's Referendum to decide whether or not the people want their country to split in two is due to take place this coming Sunda the 9th of January 2011.

An estimated 4 million people have been registered to vote, leaving thousands of Sudanese citizens not yet registered.

The decision to hold this Referendum was made in 2005, when the north and south of the country decided to enter into peace negotiations after almost two decades of bloody warfare fueled by ethnic tension, religious differences and the power struggle for oil of which there is plenty on the Sudanese north-south divide.

Here at IRT we are anxiously awaiting the results of the vote, as many of our projects are based in Western Equatoria in southern Sudan and we fear for the safety of our partners and those who they are helping.

Al Jazeera reports on mass movement of southern Sudanese formerly living in the north now returning to the south in anticipation of the vote. A vast majority of them still need to be registered in order to be allowed to cast their vote.

As a result of this mass displacement, more pressure is being put on the local population, already supporting IDP's from Darfur and refugees from DR Congo, to look after fellow country men, newly arrived returnees.