Sudan president Al-Bashir intervenes to salvage dispute between his aides

April 25, 2011 (KHARTOUM) – Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir has personally intervened to defuse an unfolding crisis between two of his close aides as officials from his ruling National Congress Party (NCP) raced to downplay the discord as caused merely by conflict of mandates.

Presidential adviser Salah Gosh, who currently chairs the Presidential Security Advisory (PSA), publicly criticized Presidential Assistant and NCP’s Vice President Nafi Ali Nafi after the latter said in a radio interview with Sudan Radio on Friday that the dialogue led by Gosh’s PSA with certain political parties was not sanctioned by the NCP’s leadership.

Nafi went on to stress that his party would not engage in a dialogue whose end result would be to weaken his party’s grip on power.

But Gosh said in a press conference a day later on Saturday that Nafi’s statement represents only him, and that his dialogue enjoys approval by President Al-Bashir and Vice-President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha.

Gosh went on to stress that no one had the right to interfere in his job as long as he is mandated by President Al-Bashir, and that the PSA dialogue would only stop at the behest of Al-Bashir.

“It is [Nafi’s statement] detrimental to the dialogue and will make opposition parties run away from it,” Gosh said.

The Gosh-Nafi crisis, as it has become to be known, comes at a time when the NCP is officially engaged in dialogue with mainstream opposition parties, namely the National Umma Party (NUP) and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), as tension continues to dominate the domestic political arena amid worsening economic conditions and a sense of loss following the secession of South Sudan in a referendum held in January.

According to a report published on Monday by the privately-owned Sudanese daily newspaper Al-Tayyar, Al-Bashir convened a meeting on Sunday evening between Nafi and Gosh.

However, the paper reported that its sources could not confirm the outcome of the meeting.

Meanwhile, other NCP officials were quick to dismiss the Nafi-Gosh crisis as a natural matter, citing conflict of mandates as its reason.

“Human genius stipulates that levels of authorities must be separated so each authority can function within the mandate given to it, this may look to others as a disagreement,” NCP’s senior member and media minister Kamal Obayd said on Monday. “This is the kind of disagreement that leads to goodness, not to misery,” he added.

The NCP’s leading female member Samia Mohamed Ahmad told reports on Monday that although her party had an independent mechanism for dialogue with opposition parties, the president also had the right to task advisory bodies with the same duty.

However, she suggested that the name PSA does not befit the role it is playing. “It would better to re-name it a political advisory rather than security advisory” Samia said.

It is to be noted that Salah Gosh said in previous statements that one of the major obstacles facing the PSA’s operation was the wrong understanding of its mandate and the perception that it stealthily represents the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS), over which he presided until he was relieved from his position in August 2009.

(ST)