The non-protections usurping Sudan national elections
By Mahgoub El-Tigani
November 23, 2007 – The Sudan ruling junta is unequivocally determined to rule without competition; irrespective of clear provisions in the Interim Constitution obligating the two ruling partners of the country, the Government of Sudan (GoS) and the Government of South Sudan (GSS), to ensure the largest participation possible for all political parties and civil society groups in the transition to democratic rule by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).
It is believed that the GoS has no reservations about the CPA orientations. The GoS, however, acts hypocritically since it claims the establishment of an all-Sudanese government of national unity at the same time the Umma and the other effective parties or leaderships are meticulously excluded by the ruling party from all State affairs. The only language adopted by the ruling junta to communicate with the opposition and civil society groups is nothing but persecution by the State Security Department and the Sudan Police.
The hypocrisy of the ruling party is self-explanatory: this November, the GoS executives and party leaders showered crocodile tears about the children smuggled from Darfur to Europe, accompanied with threats by the GoS president “to teach the West a lesson in decency and the good manners.” The GoS spokespersons, however, never mentioned the responsibility of their own administration in the unprecedented displacement of Darfur families and innocent communities, years before the condemned child-trafficking took place via Sudanese borders and airports. The same night, many watched the Sudan T.V. reporting the tearing apart of a dead infant in the streets of a Sudanese city by a herd of hungry dogs (November 21, 2007)!
A most recent show-down of the CPA by the GoS Bashir, as indicated in offensive remarks against the GSS Kiir visit to the United States, in addition to flat rejection of the GoS/GSS agreed upon non-partisan committee on the disputed issues of Abeyi (borders, administration, oil sharing, etc.), included sufficient evidence of the real intentions of the NIF/NCP towards the CPA, the North-South relations, and the critical issue of creating a conducive climate to the confidence building and active sharing in the CPA implementation.
The GoS disrupting announcements, disapproving reactions by the SPLM Pagan Amum and the opposition parties in both parts of the country were followed by extended show-down media and Press programs by the GoS vice president ‘Ali Osman Taha, presidential adviser Mustafa Isma’il, and security planner Nafi’ ‘Ali denouncing the SPLM/GSS “unwarranted pressures on its partner, the ruling National Congress Party (NCP)” [to comply fully with the CPA!].
Taha blamed the GSS for “unwillingness to attend the CPA joint committees to ensure CPA implementation” [without mention of the GoS unilateral appointments of GSS ministers in the Central Government]. He criticized further “the external unilateral contacts between the GSS and the US Government” [despite prior awareness by the concerned authorities and the US Embassy in Khartoum about the scheduled visit].
The Sudanese political arena has been closely watching the GoS hostile performance vis-à-vis the GSS, which aimed to pre-empty the CPA significant agreement from the promising opportunities it brought about to end the North-South hostilities, especially the threats of war or any other war-inciting policies or practices in all regions of the country.
The accumulated failures of the NIF/NCP GoS to implement the CPA in any principled method, however, continue to jeopardize the climates of peace, the power sharing, and democratization steps thus far established by the People of Sudan with tremendous support by the International Community, in general, and the United Nations, the African Union, and the US Government, in particular.
What should be noted, at this point, about the GoS aggressive hostilities against the CPA and the GSS up to the most recent flat call by Bashir to the People’s Defense Forces (PDF) “to stand by in full armament for Abyei” in the light of “the GoS full rejection of recommendations by the Abyei Committee to settle the GoS/GSS dispute on the area,” is the fact that the NIF/NCP GoS has been deliberately executing with all State powers and treasury a firm plan to rule out all possibilities of providing a fair and just competition in the upcoming 2008 elections.
The vitality of these elections is not simply related to a regular power striving or some traditional competition between contesting groups for legislative seats or executive posts of a ruling system. The 2008 elections will make it possible for the Sudanese People of the South to decide their political fate (staying with the North as a unified country, or separating from the North as an independent state) for the first time in the modern history of Sudan.
This goal-achievement of the CPA is certainly the single most important provision the GoS accepted painstakingly in the Neivasha negotiations. The heavy toll of keeping up the South “as a marginal part of the North,” not “as an autonomous part within the unified Sudan,” has been a major motive for the succeeding governments of Sudan to commit the brutalities of civil war that ravaged the Nation for long destructive decades (1955-1972; 1983-2005).
The GoS insistence to overpower offensive commitments by the earlier central governments of Sudan to maintain the South “as a marginal part of the North” is evidently persistent in the most recent offensive by the GoS president against Abyei committee and the CPA, as well as the condescending blame by Taha and his presidential executives on the GSS for its legitimate endeavors to exercise autonomous rule, or to pursue constitutional rights to accomplish regional or national goals (especially the South security and the Darfur peace).
The ensuing situation suggests that the real dilemma inhibiting Sudan from implementing the CPA in the most desirable principled way is indeed determined by 3 (three) major domains: 1) the “nature of the ruling regime in the North;” 2) the balance of political forces in the North; and 3) the “structure and power relations of the ruling elite in the South.”
The three determining domains must be wisely tackled on equal terms of political attention in both national and international arenas: to help process the CPA in the present time to promote the North-South relations; to prepare the country for transitional elections and the South Referendum; to strengthen the Sudanese advancement to the permanent and just peace; and to speed up the march to stable democratic rule and equitable regional development.
The nature of the ruling regime in the North is definitely a determining domain in the present and future prospects of Sudan. The monopoly of central governments over the treasury and allocation of public funds (including tight surveillance over private monies under a coercive system of taxation and customs by the Ministry of National Economy and Finance in full collaboration with the State Security Department, Ministry of the Interior, Intelligence of the Armed Forces, the PDF, and the Janjaweed gangsters) have always guaranteed the effective exclusion of competitive opposition groups from power sharing, even if the latter groups were sufficiently prepared for democratic contests.
The NIF/NCP ruling regime has been enjoying uninterrupted State monopolies since the June 30th military coup in the year 1989 up to this day with additional privileges as the sole recipient of unknown revenues from oil. Besides unaccountable investment by the ruling party’s businesses with China, Iran, Gulf States, Malaysia, Singapore, Pakistan, and India, in addition to unknown Brotherhood’s international collaterals, many of these multi-billion deals involved lucrative commissions on costly arms’ sales with China and Russia.
Led by the Minister of Defense and other NIF/NCP commanders of the armed forces, police, and state security, unidentifiable amounts of money have been largely wasted as well as expensive recruitment and training programs for tens of thousands of the PDF troops and the Janjaweed militias. Similar amounts of spending have been wasted in the security operations of the ruling junta, as well as demagogic projects of which the earlier Turabi-led Arab Islamic People’s Conference depleted the public treasury in addition to ongoing propagandist practices.
The only time the GoS bodies were asked to account for some of this extravagant spending came about in storming memos forwarded by the GSS, inquiries by the NDA representatives in the National Council [the GoS parliament], and a critical statement condemning the GoS silence about the expenditures of these public monies by the Umma leader Sadiq al-Mahdi some time ago.
The “Islamist regime and its Brothers leaderships never answered any of these legitimate queries, which is a clear evidence of the corrupted nature of the regime and its unconstitutional abstention to account for the waste it has been doing on the national wealth of Sudan all these years. Dangerously enough, the opposition accused the NIF/NCP of hiding amounts of lethal weaponry in clandestine areas in different parts of the country, including the National Capital Khartoum, under tight control of the ruling party, away from regular official reporting.
Supported by the coercive monopoly of State powers and the repressive apparatuses of the PDF and the Janjaweed gangsters, the huge amounts of monies the regime has been accumulating for its own beneficiaries, political allies, private firms, and other partisan favors, irrespective of any lawful avenue of expenditure, will provide a massive source for the ruling junta to secure overriding victory in the next elections. Thus excepting its circles from public investigations, the NIF/NCP majority legislator will restrict the contesting parties from financial sources by the Act for National Elections (under way), additional censorial sanctions on party resources, travel spending, emigrant remittances, and the kindred.
The national need to secure fair and just democratic elections to operate the country’s promised transition to a lasting democracy and permanent peace is evenly extremely difficult by the imbalance of political parties in the North, which most regrettably has been escalated by the wrongful allowance of political, legislative, judicial, and executive domination for the NIF war-mongering beast to control the transitional period in sum or in detail, according to the Neivasha negotiations and the CPA texts.
Unfortunately, the far-sighted warning and the conscious cautioning by all Sudanese civil society groups and opposition parties that filled the country and the external world against a NIF/NCP prolonged political control at the negotiations time and the aftermath were negligently ignored by the IGAD and the IGAD Friends who emphasized a short-sighted peace arrangement at expense of a far-sighted All-Sudanese Strategy for the deeply-rooted multi-dimensional and complex crises of Sudan (as successfully experienced in Mali and South Africa).
The assumption raised by the Neivasha think tanks (versus the Sudanese indigenous opposition) that an empowered NIF/NCP Brotherhood “would act legitimately for peace, instead of illegitimately pursuing wars” failed completely in the post-CPA period for the internationally-legitimized anti-democratic rule has been utilizing every drop of power to drown the country in financial corruption, military action, and security repression since day one of the CPA.
The NIF/NCP monopolistic nature will never render it possible to mend up the CPA to include necessary amendments to ensure all-Sudanese sharing in the transitional period, even if the SPLM agrees to this necessity. More than before, the need to ensure full participation of the Sudanese political parties and civil society groups in national decision making, as a sole alternative of the deteriorating state of affairs and the escalated crises between the two partners of the CPA, claims beyond any reasonable doubt serious attention with immediate actions in the national and the international arenas.
The extended pressure thus far exerted on the NIF rulers to take appropriate measures to end the crisis in Darfur – beginning with full resettlement of the displaced natives in their misappropriated hakoras [agricultural homelands] with full compensation and decent conditions – has been cunningly ignored by the awakening opportunism of the ruling junta.
The China-led international negligence of the role that the indigenous opposition is most prepared to play to end the crises of its own nation in good faith with the CPA ailing partnership explains the coercive expulsion of the Sudanese civil society and effective political parties from all State affairs by the repressive regime, which happily makes maximum use of the situation for partisan gain.
The final resultant of these serious imbalances is crystal clear: continuous failures in the North-South governmental relations; frustrated roles by the regional and international powers; and a most dangerous pre-emptying of the national competencies and political potentialities by both NIF rulers and the external players.
The “structure and power relations of the ruling elite in the South” is a determining domain in the political formula to democratizing Sudan. True, the Sudanese people share many similarities in the social life, for example the emphasis on individual freedoms and the everlasting struggles to enjoy public rights.
Within the North, however, the Central Sudan, often at expense of the other marginal regions, consolidated lots of its ethnic and social differentials into a unified culture of negotiable politics and competitive agency that (despite army intrusions and unlawful interruptions of civil rule) molded centuries of global experiences, irrigated agriculture and manufacturing skills, and obtained high expertise in modern planning, business administration, education, health, and the other modern services.
The half of a century war-trodden South has been severely deprived of modern skills and amenities. In spite of the high potentialities and abilities of the Southerners in running an autonomous system of rule in the South, as well as sharing power and wealth on equitable terms with the central governance, significant differences exist between the South and the North with respect to the extent of State-society negotiation and reconciliation practices; trade unionism; levels of urbanization, economic infrastructures, and city construction; and the efficacy of the means and experiences of complex organizations.
Moreover, unique characteristics of the cultural life in the two parts of the country differentiate their religious preferences, social styles, and the modes of legal relations and political interactions. These are facts fully recognized by the CPA and the Interim Constitution, as well as the opposition groups; albeit consistently ignored by the NIF/NCP GoS political tutelage and ethno-regional prejudices. On the other side, the GSS is required to exert a great effort to repudiate the sizable segment of the Southerner democratic expatriates whose return, nonetheless, hinges on the prevalence of a stable ethno-regional peace in the South side-by-side with acceptable levels of non-military democratic governance.
Neither the South nor any other region of the marginal Sudan would possibly accomplish the targeted goals of socio-economic and political progression without full liberation from the center’s debilitating obstacles via a popular civil government in a unified State that seriously implements just and fair center-region relations under a transparent system of democratic rule. The NIF-NCP elusive implementation of the CPA, intimidating militias in the South, media attacks, and unwillingness to share honest oil accounts with the GSS or the Northern opposition among other hostile policies act negatively against the South-North hopes for a successful transition to democratic rule.
The SPLM/A military machine played an active role against the NIF/NCP armies in civil war. The former finally inherited a devastated South whose population needs a sustainable civil-minded large-scale agricultural and manufacturing development for the millions displaced and the others impoverished and deprived of almost all modern amenities, especially jobs, housing, health, and education. The budget of the GSS, however, has not adequately addressed these agenda since 60 percent or more of the multi-million treasury went to the salaries and privileges of the military, security staff, and government personnel, exactly as the NIF/NCP GoS did in the North.
The Malakal massacre, some time ago, and the Yambio events in these past weeks reflect in the serious burden of the South ruling group; most importantly, the regrettable conflicts unmasked the urgent need to democratize the ruling system of the South with equalitarian representation of the ethnic and social forces of the region, as well as the non-SPLM political parties and intellectual associations – the main sources of political stability towards the establishment of a modern polity in South Sudan. It is hoped the potentialities of the South to establish secular rule, as enshrined in the CPA, would be strongly manifested in real democratic terms – above the militarized form of governance thus far in control.
The SPLM leadership, however, has not yet shown effective efforts to work hand-in-hand with the democratic opposition of Sudan. Instead, precious time has been wasted in failing attempts to collaborate with the NIF/NCP discriminating group, which obviously believes in a Brotherhood supremacy over all non-Brotherhood groups (Muslim or non-Muslim; in Sudan or elsewhere), and is repeatedly prepared to engage the country in a new war or some military action to maintain emergency law, impose the one-party rule, isolate the country from global and regional democracies, and frustrate the civil society in all regions of the country.
Conclusions
The three domains determining the transition to democratic rule in Sudan, as discussed in this analysis, namely the nature of the ruling regime in the North; the balance of political forces in the North; and the structure of the ruling elite and power relations in the South should be comprehensively tackled for a permanent settlement of the political crisis of the country. The piece-meal approach adopted comfortably by the NIF/NCP ruling regime, which has been mistakably encouraged by external powers (in the way the Darfur Crisis has been frustratingly handled and the way the CPA is increasingly failed) must be immediately stopped.
To help process the CPA in a principled manner; promote the North-South relations peacefully; and prepare the country for the transitional elections and the South Referendum professionally and competently, the All-Sudanese National Constitutional Conference must be strongly emphasized by the UN, the AU, the US Government and the other concerned powers before elections are held: the one-million miles country will have to be maintained by representatives of its 35 million humans in the best non-exclusionary traditions of their ancient Nation rather than throwing the fate of Sudan in the next decades under the brutal rule of the International Brotherhood and their ruthless surrogates the NIF/NCP GoS.
* The author is a sociologist at the Department of Social Work & Sociology in Tennessee State University, Nashville TN, USA. He can be reached at [email protected]