Sudan’s military junta is approaching a year without a promised re-establishment of a transitional government, putting the country’s journey to democracy in limbo.
Since last year on October 25, the Sovereignty Council under Lt-Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has struggled to set up a new government, after ousting the administration of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok.
The PM later returned to his post but quit two months later, citing frustrations in reestablishing a new cabinet.
But as a year approaches, the biggest question is whether a 2019 constitutional agreement that brought in a transitional government which was later ousted, should be retained, or a new constitution written.
On the one hand, civil society organisations are putting pressure on the military to change the 2019 agreement — the Constitutional Charter for the 2019 Transitional Period, formed after the ouster of Omar al-Bashir in April 2019, to usher in a new constitution.
This week 54 grassroots organisations, dubbed the Resistance Committees Coalition, signed a new charter intended to put the country back on the path to democracy and remove the military from power.
Juba Peace Agreement
The charter called for the resignation of the current military leaders; the abolition of the 2019 Constitutional Document; the cancellation of the Juba Peace Agreement with some armed groups that had joined the civilian administration last year, and the establishment of a new transitional constitution and legislative council.
The Juba Peace Agreement which was signed in 2020 between the military and the civilian players and other armed groups, promised to integrate all gun-carrying groups into a single military force and promote ethnic and regional representation in the military. But the unification has proved difficult as some powerful rebel forces refused to sign the agreement.
“We affirmed our rejection of any calls for direct or indirect negotiations with the coup plotters and called for the continuation of peaceful resistance,” said the civil society group’s charter that stipulates the overthrow of the October 25 coup elements and demands accountability of all those involved from both civil and military forces.
On the other hand, the civil society groups known as the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) — which played a vital role in the ouster of Omar al-Bashir in 2019 — are demanding the revival of the 2019 constitutional agreement and for the military to return power to the civilians.
“The Executive Bureau of the FCC decided to draft a position paper on the issues of ending the coup and establishing a full democratic civil (transitional) authority,” the FCC said in a statement, maintaining that they will only accept the establishment of full civilian authority.
The current ruler, Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan — that staged the October 2021 coup that overturned the transitional government — has maintained that the military is not keen on clinging to power and that Sudan will soon have a breakthrough in the political crisis through a tripartite mechanism tasked with facilitating intra-Sudanese dialogue. The tripartite mechanism involves the UN, African Union, and the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (Igad).
Ruthless suppression
Speaking to the media on October 10, Gen Burhan said that the army is committed to staying away from politics and is willing to facilitate political players to form a fully civilian government.
The mediators are pushing for a new agreement before protests on the anniversary of the October 21 popular uprising or the first anniversary of the military coup on October 25, given that any further skirmishes could scuttle the talks.
According to Mohamed Belaiche, the AU representative in Sudan, they met with Gen Burhan and agreed that the political settlement should be engineered by the stakeholders themselves and on the basis of broad consensus.
Since October, the Resistance Committees have organised weekly protests against Sudan’s military government, which has ruthlessly suppressed public dissent. Some 117 demonstrators have been killed, and hundreds have been arrested. Now the challenge is whether to reinstate the 2019 charter or push for a new constitution that would make a clean break from the military.
