Sudanese opposition reiterates calls for overthrow of Bashir regime

April 19, 2014 (KHARTOUM) – The chairman of the National Consensus Forces (NCF), Farouk Abu Issa, has reiterated the determination of the opposition alliance to overthrow the government, underscoring they wouldn’t engage in a dialogue that doesn’t lead to dismantling the regime and restoring democracy.

Last January, the president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir called upon opposition parties and rebel groups to engage in a comprehensive national dialogue to end war and restore democracy in Sudan.

The NCF refused Bashir’s call for dialogue and instead propose forming a transitional government and holding a national conference with the participation of rebel groups to discuss a peaceful solution for the conflicts in Darfur region, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile states before to adopt a new democratic constitution and hold general elections.

The two major opposition forces, National Umma Party (NUP) led by Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi and Popular Congress Party (PCP) led by Hassan Al-Turabi, however have so far accepted to take part in the national dialogue process.

The NCF chairman, who spoke at a public meeting at Al-Rabta square in Shambat neighbourhood in Khartoum North on Friday, said the regime is faltering and wouldn’t survive more than two months, pointing that internal divisions within the government will accelerate its demise.

Abu Issa suffered a sudden ailment while he was addressing the meeting before he was taken to the hospital and being treated from a severe low blood pressure.

Speakers have agreed that sacrifices of the Sudanese people forced the government to allow the opposition holds the public meeting, saying it was not a gift from the regime.

The representative of the Republican Party (RP), Asmaa Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, said the obscurantist forces labelled them as “apostates and infidels” in order to ban their activities, describing national leaderships who assumed power since independence as “sintered and failed”.

She pointed that her father and RP founder once said the Sudanese people are like a ‘giant led by dwarfs’, affirming that woman saw unprecedented humiliation under the current regime.

Her father, Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, was a Sudanese religious thinker, leader, and trained engineer. He was executed for apostasy at the age of 76 by the regime of Gaafar Numiery.

Taha further said political Islam is receding throughout the Muslim world, holding Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi, and Hassan Al-Turabi, responsible for the destruction of the country.

She wondered how can we believe Turabi who confessed that he “lied” to the Sudanese people while the believer doesn’t lie?

Taha also said Al-Mahdi used to say that Shari’a [Islamic] laws which were applied during Numiery’s regime don’t worth the ink they are written by, noting he didn’t annul those laws when he assumed power.

She noted that the Sudanese people still suffer from the implications of those “bad laws”.

The chairman of the Sudanese Congress Party (SCP), Ibrahim Al-Shaikh, for his part, described rapprochement between the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and the PCP of Turabi as an attempt to reproduce the 1989 coup d’état which brought this regime to power, saying the Sudanese people wouldn’t be fooled again.

The PCP split from the NCP following 1999’s bitter power struggle between Bashir and Turabi, with the latter was ousted from his post as parliamentary speaker and the chairmanship of the ruling party alike.

Turabi later established the PCP and has since been a vociferous critic of the very regime whose army-backed seizure of power in 1989 he orchestrated.

Al-Shaikh said that prisons are currently full of political detainees in a clear violation of the basic human rights, demanding reviewing the absolute powers and laws governing the work of the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS).

In order to create a conducive environment and to incite opposition forces to join the national dialogue process, president Omer Al-Bashir recently issued several decisions including, lift of ban on public rallies and meetings.

(ST)