A proposal on how to run Sudan’s transitional authorities has angered civilian protest movements in Sudan, days after a major conference suggested power should remain in the hands of the military for the time being.
The rally of civil administrators and clerics gathered in Khartoum last weekend was meant to discuss suggestions of how the country can end deadly violence that has been going on since October 25 last year. Instead, the Call for National Accord conference only generated a wider gulf between civilian movements and the army.
Participants in the roundtable conference, organised by pro-military and pro-Omar al-Bashir groups said they were searching for consensus to overcome the country’s challenges including creating an acceptable transitional government.
Their solution? To grant the military “all the supreme sovereign powers in the country through a higher defence council.” They also acknowledged the termination of the decisions of the Committee to Dismantle the Salvation System, according to which assets including land, companies and funds belonging to influential ‘Brotherhood’ of the former regime of Omar al-Bashir were confiscated.
This conference, although looking for a way out of the current crisis, was revising transitional decisions of the former government of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok who was ousted on October 25 last year alongside his council of ministers.
In November 2019, Hamdok’s government had adopted laws to “dismantle” the former regime of Omar al-Bashir who had been toppled in April of that year. The laws weren’t universally supported, especially by al-Bashir’s supporters who felt they were being targeted.
Anti-Bashir
The Dismantlement Committee was to be composed of ministers of Justice, Defence and Health but the programme was to be led by the chairman of the Sovereignty Council head by the military.
Conference participants overturned all that. But civilian movements opposed to the military rule say the proposals ignored a suggestion on dismantling of Bashir’s corruption system, which is widely believed to have provided a wide clique of players with tens of billions of looted dollars.
Bashir is in jail for corruption but his regime also profited many others.
Their proposal also ignored the demand for justice for more than the 117 people who were killed during the protests that have been going on for about 10 months and the hundreds who were killed during the sit-in of the General Command of the Armed Forces in June 2019; two months after Bashir was ousted.
The conference was skipped by protest movements who labelled it an attempt to restore the Bashir regime.
It is expected that the conference's recommendations, if implemented, will face major obstacles, most notably the widespread rejection in the street that adheres to specific demands that have not been addressed.
In addition to the international community, including major Western countries, which has declared more than once that it will not accept any “non-consensual” government, may also stay away from it.
One-sided meeting
The Sudanese political analyst Tariq Osman told The EastAfrican that “The conference held in Khartoum will not achieve a breakthrough in the Sudanese crisis considering that all participants in it represent one party, and also they agree in their positions and do not have significant differences among themselves.”
“Therefore, I do not think that the recommendations of the conference can contribute to breaking the deadlock in the political scene, even if the military part adopts those recommendations,” he said.
“The recommendations that came out of the conference clearly express the position of the military component, but as long as there are important and influential blocs that were not part of what was done, any results will be of no value.”
Sudan hasn’t had a proper government since October’s coup and civilian movements have rejected the military in any new transitional authorities.
