Did the demonstration work in Sudan?

By Zechariah Manyok Biar

December 17, 2009 — Change is often based on effective actions. This is the maxim that eluded the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) from the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005 to December, 2009. SPLM had been using withdrawal from the Government of National Unity (GoNU) and the boycott of parliamentary sessions in order to force the National Congress Party (NCP) into the implementation of CPA. But the method that SPLM had been using was ineffective. Now things are changing because SPLM has learned to use a method that often results in change. This method is engagement.

I opposed SPLM’s boycott of parliamentary sessions in October, 2009 in my article entitled, “Hard choices by SPLM,” not because I did not understand the frustration that SPLM had with NCP, but because research has shown that the boycott of parliamentary sessions, or any other political boycott, has very little effect in bringing change to any political system. The reality is that SPLM might not have been doing research to prove whether the method they were going to use worked somewhere or not before they made a decision to use it.

However, SPLM is now showing its effectiveness in the Sudanese political battle-field in its change of tactics in dealing with NCP. The demonstration on December 7, 2009 has produced results that demonstrations often produce, which is the cause of genuine fear in stubborn politicians like the NCP’s.

Even though a demonstration is often a difficult choice to make in an oppressive system in a totalitarian government like that of Sudan, there is enough evidence showing that demonstrations work. Politicians do not completely ignore demonstrations because demonstrations can grow to a point where the government can lose control, quit political scene, and hand power over to opposition groups.

The government of Sudan, especially the NCP, ignored SPLM’s parliamentary boycott for two months but it was shaken by one day’s demonstration on December 7, 2009 to the point where its officials gave SPLM what it wanted. NCP chose between losing its power together with South Sudan and losing South Sudan without losing its power. Great fear!

NCP’s fear is based on evidence because NCP’s officials know that demonstrations can lead to popular uprising and the change of government by force like what happened in the Iranian’s Revolution in which demonstrations paralyzed the country by the end of 1978, resulting in the collapse of the royal regime on February 11, 1979. The current fear of NCP is not my mere speculation.

On December 17, 2009, Sudan Tribune reported the Sudanese presidential adviser and the former director of the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) Salah Gosh as accusing “the opposition parties of seeking to create a popular uprising to topple the government.” Gen. Gosh was expressing the fear that Bashir’s administration has. The administration understood that it could not ignore the demonstrators that included SPLM’s Secretary General and still survive. The fear has left NCP’s officials with nothing more than tough talks in an effort to scare off another attempt by opposition parties to stir up the public against NCP.

But the “crackdown” method of demonstrators that Gen. Gosh now talks about will not work either, because it can motivate all concerned Sudanese from within and from without Sudan to show to international community who is who in Sudanese politics. The crackdown of demonstrators can make NCP lose support from within Sudan, the only place where President Bashir can hide from the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant.

However, it would be a mistake for opposition parties, especially SPLM, to pat each other on the back now and shout victory. There is still a long way to go and the journey still needs effective methods for transforming Sudanese democracy. I am not recommending the continuation of demonstration here. A political demonstration must always be a last resort if NCP proves stubbornness in a particular political debate. I am recommending a political engagement that SPLM has now resumed with NCP in the parliament.

Engagement in parliament is better than boycotting of parliamentary sessions because opposition parties can decide to block the passing into law of bills that they deem dangerous to political freedom in the country. Since South Sudan is a separate administration from North Sudan’s, nobody can ignore the SPLM’s members of parliament in a bill that they threaten to filibuster even if SPLM’s MPs are minority in the parliament. If the NCP’s MPs play the game of numbers in the parliament, they can also think twice on how to implement in the country a policy opposed by all the SPLM’s MPs in the parliament. This is why SPLM needs political alliance with other political parties in both Northern and Southern Sudan to have number of MPs it needs to transform the system without being sidelined by the NCP’s majority MPs.

A political alliance of opposition parties is the better way of forcing change into a totalitarian government. Northern political parties and Southern political parties may not have the same interest in many areas of their political philosophies, but they share one thing in common: they want democratic transformation in Sudan so that they can get involved in a fair political exercise even if South Sudan becomes a different nation in 2011. Political coalition is good because it gives opposition parties the powers that NCP cannot ignore, as we have seen in the last two days of demonstration, or rather processions in Khartoum. Every opposition party believes that the current Sudanese security laws only serve the NCP’s dictatorial political agenda.

The danger of the current Sudanese security laws is shown by the recent comment of Gen. Gosh when he said that the NCP will teach opposition groups what he called a “brutal lesson during the elections.” Even though Gen. Gosh meant a political victory of the NCP in his statement, his choice of words, “brutal lesson,” shows what strategies of winning the NCP officials have on their minds. They can use undemocratic brutal strategies of winning elections and support their actions with the current security laws. So it is in the interest of Northern political parties to cooperate with SPLM in changing these laws even if they do not like Southern Sudan’s session in 2011.

All in all, SPLM Secretary General Pagan Amum, his deputy Yasir Arman, Minister Abbas Juma, and other leading opposition politicians who were arrested on December 7, 2009 during their peaceful procession in Khartoum might have been humiliated, but their action resulted in some changes in the contentious bills that created distrust between Northern and Sothern Sudan. That is the effectiveness of demonstrations. Like it or not, things are now working in Sudanese politics. NCP will now have no choice apart from listening to what opposition parties are saying.

Zechariah Manyok Biar is a graduate student at Abilene Christian University, Texas, USA. He is pursuing a Master of Arts in Christian Ministry and a Master of Science in Social Work, specializing in Administration and Planning. For comments, contact him at email: [email protected]