Is there any hope for real democracy in Sudan?

By Ahmed Elzobier

October 29, 2008 — Sudan is now at an historic juncture and how we arrived at this state of affairs is a tangled tale. In short, the country is now facing several deadly realities: (1) Sudan is now lead by the first serving head of state that could be indicted by the International Criminal Court; (2) due to the extreme economic policies of liberalization advocated in the last 30 years Sudan has become one of the most socially and economically inequitable countries in the world; (3) most of the signed peace agreements have not been implemented; (4) the Failed States Index in 2008 places Sudan second from bottom, out of the 120 marks allocated as failure indicators Sudan scored 113, and got full marks in criminalization and delegitimization of the State, only Somalia is worse; (5) the Ibrahim Index of African Governance in 2008 ranks Sudan as 45th out of 48 African countries; (6) the current economic and political frustrations make for a lethal mix and this country could easily slip down the path of an inevitable disintegration or civil war.

To make matters even worse, Sudan lacks a unifying national symbol, a reference in recent history that could bring together all its ethnically and culturally diverse groups – or maybe “we need to go back thousands of years so as to rediscover ourselves”, as suggested by the late John Garang in his 2005 speech. The country’s “hypothetical geo-political status” was carved by the hand-of-history and the colonial powers. This has predetermined its current fate.

In a perfect world, of course, we would have a peaceful and tranquil country. Apparently that wasn’t to be the case, our fate has been sealed by extreme political selfishness and a fatal lack of vision within our political class. Instead, the real vision they have in store for us has been summarized eloquently by the ultimate Machiavelli of Sudan’s politics, Hassan al-Turabi. He repeated his painfully sarcastic remarks when I interviewed him for the Sudan Tribune last year and he said: “They [Sudanese Politicians] betray one another, imprison one another, reconcile with one another, but they never assassinate one another. In Sudan, only the people have the privilege of dying”.

Indeed only the people have the misfortune to die, in fact millions of them have died for lost causes. One of the most shocking scenes from the war reported by the journalist Roy Nugen, back in 1993 outside Ayod, when a relief worker accompanied him, found a corpse of a woman covered with vultures, “The stink was enough to ward any one off, but the Sudanese relief worker sense something unusual. He scattered the bird and turned over the woman rotten body. Beneath the corpse he uncovered a pair of infants, both alive. A finger tip of one of the babies has gnawed to the bone by a vulture,” wrote Nugent.

There is something very peculiar about the Sudanese political class, expressing any sense of guilt or remorse is alien to them. The total lack of political vision or clear achievable objectives seems to be their modus operandi. But there is something even more ominously disturbing about them; it seems they are irredeemably insular to the suffering of their people. We are blessed with politicians who possess a rhinoceros’s hide, devoid of empathy and mercy. Their reality seems to be reflected in a magical mirror that causes failure to mean success, achieving nothing to mean achieving something, and the death and destruction they have caused is blamed on anyone but themselves. The tragedy for Sudan now is that there is a vanishingly small percentage of politicians that you could point to confidently and say they can be respected or trusted by the people.

So, is there any hope for real democracy in Sudan? These days many sensible people around the globe agree that a parliamentary democracy is not necessarily the ideal or optimal political system to govern human affairs, but it remains commonly accepted that it is still the least-worst system of governance available. However, the Chinese appear to have “a theory” about democracy in Africa. According to a China’s People’s Daily editorial: “Western-style democratic theory simply isn’t suited to African conditions, but rather carries with it the root of disaster” the editorial said, following the Kenyan election crisis early this year. So here we go again, many bigoted people in the past said that women were incapable of participating or voting in an election, and that slaves or black people should not vote – now they are either eating their words or turning in their graves.

Historically, Sudan is one of the few African countries that have experimented with a multi-party system since its independence over 50 years ago. However, the country’s inherently weak political structure failed miserably to sustain a meaningful democratic process. The political elites were incapable of consolidating power and maintaining democratic rule in post-independence Sudan. The Armed Forces, in alliance with various political groups, toppled the multi-party system three times. The plotters almost emulated the hyena when it preys on the young, weak, diseased or injured. Sadly, young, weak and diseased was exactly the state of the Sudan parliamentary periods.

Peter Woodward, the British academic, identified five central elites throughout the ninety years before the coup of June 1989. The first two are the dominant sectarian parties. One is the Mahdist movement and its associated Umma Party, traditionally linked to landowning interests on the River Nile and the rural aristocracy of western Sudan, and the other is the Khatmiyya sect and the Unionist Party, associated with trade interests and the rural aristocracy of the northern and eastern regions. These two elites dominated each of Sudan’s parliamentary periods (1953–58, 1964–69 and 1985–89). Woodward also argued that another pair includes the “modern” forces – the administrative elite including the military; and the trade unions, professional associations, and the Communist Party, historically aligned with the left. Lastly, the Islamists emerged as an elite group themselves in the late 1970s.

To compensate for their lack of popularity, Sudan’s left and far right ideological parties invariably resorted to the army to impose their will on the nation in the 1969 left-wing backed coup, and the 1989 Islamist party coup. Both the communists and the Muslim Brothers, historically, have not been genuine believers in parliamentary democracy. Southern Sudan and other marginalized areas of Sudan were ignored during the democratic periods. Some vulnerable and hopelessly naïve marginalized area politicians were continuously manipulated in power squabbles in Khartoum, and many who were fed-up with Khartoum’s manipulation opted for armed revolt.

Now, to focus on current Sudanese political affairs, the two parties that have dominated the political scene in Sudan following the peace agreement in 2005, the National Congress Party (NCP) and Sudan people Libration Movement (SPLM), both lack democratic credentials and tradition. Although the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) stipulated the importance of a democratic transformation that would eventually lead to transparent and fair elections. Both parties seem at a loss, arguing continuously about unrealistic election dates next year, and without realistic and timely preparation for this election from all stakeholders it will be a meaningless exercise. There are now many challenges the two parties need to resolve before the election, however, it will be a miracle to resolve these challenges in one year let alone in the next six or seven months that also include the formation of the National Elections Committee and amending many Sudanese acts to conform with the Interim Constitution, in particular the Sudanese National Security Act and Press and Publications Act. Finally, to have any credible elections requires the participation of all Sudanese and that means resolving the Darfur crisis now.

However, the NCP who have most at stake if there is a free and fair election, find it increasingly difficult to come to terms with the new political reality and a potentially disempowering arrangement. They will continue to create more obstacles along the way.

Regrettably, the Sudanese people have been through a deeply traumatic period in the last twenty years. They are a very proud people compelled to be submissive to a brutal authoritarian system. The current regime has used a well-known textbook method to consolidate power through fear and bribery. Many psychological studies show that submission to authority is a dilemma as ancient as human societies themselves. According to these studies “obedience” is regarded as a virtue in many traditional cultures; historically, children have been expected to be obedient to their elders, slaves to their owners, serfs to their lords in feudal society, lords to their king, and everyone to God. But also human history showed repeatedly that people rebelled against their tormentors. This country also has an admirable tradition of standing up against injustice, whether this injustice is committed by foreign or local powers, and no one can erase that from the nation’s history.

Finally, only great wisdom and a true understanding of the historic importance of the task can create the genuine democratic transformation needed to save Sudan from the abyss, and in the process discredit the theories of the Chinese and other bigoted people about Africa. However, knowing what we know about the toxic political set-up we have in this country, the ultimate question is, where will this wisdom come from?

(The author is a SudanTribue journalist. he can be reached at [email protected]