The rubber stamp parliament
By Zechariah Manyok Biar
June 11, 2013 – The parliament of the Republic of Sudan is reported to have approved President Bashir’s decision to shut down the oil flow from South Sudan. According to Sudan Tribune news, June 11, 2013, the Sudanese Parliament described President Bashir’s decision as “absolutely right.” All the MPs signed up to the approval, except only one MP.
This kind of decision shows you that the Parliament of the Republic of Sudan is a rubber stamp Parliament. It is not only this time that this Parliament rubber stamped controversial decisions single-mindedly made by President Bashir. Let us see few examples of this rubber stamp decisions.
In April, 2012 after President Bashir described South Sudanese as insects, the Sudanese Legislative Assembly members rushed to their work and passed a resolution in which they described South Sudan as an enemy state. Part of their statement said, “We consider the government of South Sudan an enemy and Sudanese state institutions must treat it as such” (ST, April 16, 2012).
The Speaker of Parliament added this to march President Bashir’s rhetoric: “We declare that we will confront the [Sudan People Liberation Movement] SPLM until we end its rule of the South, and will work to gather our resources to realize this aim.”
We in South Sudan thought those statements were made with serious political considerations. We also expected those statements to be reversed with serious political considerations, if there was a reason to do so.
We were, however, wrong in our political understanding of how political decisions are made in the Sudan. When President Bashir announced later that he had agreed with his counterpart President Kiir to work together to implement the Cooperation Agreements, the Sudanese Legislators rushed to work and ratified the Agreements.
What was interesting in the ratification process was that the Sudanese Legislators never amended their April’s resolutions of the same year in which they labeled South Sudan as the enemy state.
To make matters even more amusing, the Speaker who said in April, 2012 that his country would confront the SPLM until it ended the SPLM rule in South Sudan said this in October of the same year: “The agreement institutes for a new phase between the two countries and puts them before a historical responsibility that necessitates building of trust and reaffirming determination to implement what has been agreed upon” (Xinhua, October 17, 2012).
Before the implementation of the Agreements could take place, President Bashir gave more conditions that delayed the implementation. But the Parliament that is the supreme lawmaker in the country did not even say a word about the delay of the policy that they had ratified.
Again, when President Bashir decided earlier in 2013 that it was time for South Sudan oil to start flowing through his country, the Parliament signed up for the decision without any question.
About six months later, President Bashir single-mindedly decided that he had ordered his Minister of Petroleum to shut down the oil flow from South Sudan. There is no report showing that he had first consulted the Parliament which ratified the Agreements as the supreme lawmaker of the land. But the Parliament called the decision “absolutely right.”
All these make you conclude that the Sudanese Parliament is just a rubber stamp of what President Bashir decides. It would, however, be unrealistic to expect them to do otherwise under a dictator. So, we can just ignore whatever they say because it does not carry any meaning. What President Bashir decides is what matters.
Zechariah Manyok Biar can be reached at [email protected]