Agar proposes three-step roadmap to settle Sudan’s political crisis
July 12, 2022 (KHARTOUM) – Malik Agar, SPLM-N leader, launched a three-step initiative to end the political stalemate in Sudan after the military coup of October 25, 2021.
In a meeting with foreign diplomats in Khartoum on Tuesday, Agar said that a genuine settlement requires agreeing on the powers of the government institutions, choosing a prime minister who would form a technocratic cabinet and holding an inclusive constitutional conference before the election.
Last March, the Sudanese Revolutionary Front (SRF) proposed a two-phase process. The first gathers the revolution’s forces and the military component to agree on a prime minister and his government, In the second phase, the discussions on the future constitution will include all the other political groups except the al-Bashir’s party.
The new initiative provides that preliminary discussions should be held to agree on the role and powers of the various state institutions.
Agar said he would propose to the stakeholders a paper determining the powers and tasks of the government, the collegial presidency and the transitional parliament.
After that, he would call for forming a joint legal drafting committee composed of stakeholders’ delegates and national and international experts to draft a new constitutional declaration.
He underscored the need to draft the text in clear terms to avoid ambiguities that have characterised the 2019 Constitutional Declaration.
The SPLM-N did not clearly speak about who would participate in the first and second phases of the proposed process. Still, he implicitly suggested that it would be reserved for the forces of the Forces for Freedom and Change, the armed groups and the military component.
“The third stage will be a comprehensive national dialogue in which all the political and social forces participate, except for the dissolved National Congress Party. Also, it ensures the participation of the new political and social forces that emerged after the revolution, youth organizations, women, refugees and displaced persons whose issues have been ignored for long periods,” he said.
In a related development, the SRF Spokesman and Beja Congress Chairman Osama Saeed stated on Tuesday that they would boycott the dialogue if the military component did not participate in the political process.
Last week, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan said that the military component would not participate in the process but wanted to discuss with the would-be-formed government some competence to be reserved for the military council.
(ST)