2015 elections will see neither light nor twilight
By Mahmoud A. Suleiman
November 11, 2014 – This article comes against the backdrop of the recent news that the Field Marshal Omar al-Bashir would be candidate for the presidency in the elections scheduled in April 2015. Al-Bashir came to power through a military coup under the name of “National Salvation Revolution” in the June 30, 1989. The Shura Council of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP), on Wednesday October 22, 2014, chose him again to be the party’s candidate for the presidency in the elections scheduled in April 2015. Although al-Bashir pledged in January 27 January 2014 that he would go ahead with re-drafting of the Constitution and bring together the Opposition parties and the government to start a National Dialogue, but there has not been any meaningful progress. Moreover, his decision to run the April 2015 elections cast doubt on the feasibility of genuine dialogue. Al-Bashir has been trying to persuade the political class and his staunch supporters to back him for another term in office through fraudulent elections in April 2015, the results of which are known in advance, as a fait accompli despite rejection by the Sudanese people. Analysts described his attempt as a way for issuing a death certificate to the cultural orientation the alleged state of apostolic project.
What annoys most is that the alleged thousands of members who flogged together and attended the General Congress of the National Congress Party (NCP) and chose Omar al-Bashir as their candidate for the presidency in the elections of April 2015, proved themselves as a group of castrated rams. They proved that no one, among the sheep there was even a single stallion ram for better representing them instead of Omer al-Bashir who has become a ramshackle and mentally bankrupt and does not have the language eloquence but swearing obscenities and insults, using rude offensive language. Model of al-Bashir’s public speeches goes as follows: (Southerners are insects; all the international community is under my shoes).
The (NCP) regime is unmatched by any other regime in recent history other than the rule of the infamous brutal Communist regime of Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot who ruled Cambodia – the former Kampuchea – in the last century in the period- 1975-1979.
The ruling (NCP) in Sudan re-elected Omar al-Bashir as president of the party, and adopted him as the presidential candidate in the presidential elections scheduled for April 2015. The party also decided at the time not to extradite Omar al-Bashir, as requested by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and handing him over to that court, in the way the President of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, who surrendered himself bravely and voluntarily to the court!
The ICC had issued in March 2009 an arrest warrant for President al-Bashir, accusing him of committing crimes against humanity and war crimes during the war in Darfur, the first president issued in his right an arrest warrant from the court, while still in power. In February of 2013 the same court issued a second arrest warrant against President al-Bashir, accusing him of genocide in which and considered that there are reasonable grounds to believe that a he is a criminal responsible for genocide crimes against three ethnic groups- Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa – living in the troubled region of Darfur.
However, the appearance of the Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta at the International Criminal Court (ICC) this month of October 2014, the first president to appear before a court at the helm, revived the issue again, and weakened the anti- Court stance of the Africa Union (AU).
Sudan has refused to implement the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) order, and considered it a political trial, and said that Sudan is not signatory to the Rome Statute component of the court, supported by the position of the African Union (AU), which claims and considered that the Court targeting African leaders.
According to the United Nations since the beginning of the civil war in Darfur in 2003, about 300 thousand people have been killed and 2.7 million displaced, but Khartoum denied these figures saying that the death toll does not exceed 10 thousand people.
A spokesperson for the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) said “I do not know how can a party nominate a person wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), a person who is unacceptable regionally, internationally and domestically.” One of the main armed movements in Darfur (JEM) considered that al- Bashir’s nomination as a candidate for the position of presidency in the elections scheduled by the (NCP) regime “confirms his dictatorship.”
The confused bad output nomination of Omar al-Bashir as a candidate for presidency in the April 2015 elections by the Shura Council of the ruling gang has put a tragic end to the alleged absurd Wathba National Dialogue.
It is noteworthy that the Sudanese president, Omer al-Bashir, announced last year and vowed that he would not run for election in 2015!
In the next elections, the (NCP) regime will be competing with itself! The stifling crisis of the opposition parties has come about because some of the parties classified as opposition are in reality a making of the ruling regime of the NCP. They have been nicknamed as – in Arabic: Ahzab al-Tawali – meaning loyalist in succession Parties.
The conferees or rather those who betrayed their will by nominating Omar al-Bashir, stressed that al-Bashir’s personal safety and their own interests, and the interests of the ruling gang have high priority over the national interests and the interest of the people of Sudan. They insisted on the re-nomination of the biggest traitor to the Sudanese motherland. A man who tended to renege the oath to preserve its unity and sought to divide it with premeditation through his misconduct and the reckless behaviour of his racist gang. Moreover, he is a fugitive from the international justice and haunted by the arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC), and is unable to discharge the functions of presidential diplomacy because of those reasons. The participants in the NCP Shura Congress judged the complete collapse of our national economy, and the disintegration of the social fabric for eternal collapse that is hard to darn or sew. This is an explicit invitation to all the opposition forces and civil society organizations and other sectors of the people to monitor and gather their ranks and resort to all available means to pounce on the gang with a view to ousting it before they cause further dismantling of the Sudanese nation.
Sudan lives in suffocating crises of war, poverty, poor economy, epidemic corruption, lawlessness, famine, diseases, human right abuses, lack of basic freedoms, political crisis and failure of diplomacy and relations with neighbouring countries, African as well Arab states. The only way to run general elections in Sudan is the writing of a fresh new constitution. There is an urgent need to write a new constitution for the Sudan with the participation of the opposition and all the components of the Sudanese people. Only then, can the people of the Sudan think about elections.
What kind of elections is the despotic National Congress Party (NCP) regime speaking about and which constitution the putschists are clinging to in a country where (60%) of the population live under the scourge of absurd wars and suffer decades of dreaded woes? Will the (NCP) entity hold the alleged April 2015 elections without the participation of the people of the regions of Darfur, South Kordofan and the Blue Nile? Moreover, one should not forget the fact that the (2005) Constitution has expired by the end of the transitional period and the secession of the Southern Sudanese who formed their own separate nascent state – the Republic of South Sudan – as another country. Accordingly, the Constitution that was based on a partnership between the two parties, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM/A) and the Government of Sudan (GoS) has ended. Therefore, the Implementation of the contents of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) ended the material basis for the use of the 2005 Constitution, which came under the (CPA) that ended the long civil war of 21 years.
Sudanese president Omer Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir delivered a speech in the capital, Khartoum, on 27 January 2014 in which he appealed for a political and economic renaissance in the country through his the National Dialogue / Wathba initiative. Al-Bashir should bear the consequences of his prevarications and intransigence about the Wathba to go further. Furthermore, al-Bashir is guilty of unleashing the notorious so-called Rapid Support Force (RSF) Janjaweed militia who has been committing serious abuses in conflict zones. The professional liar Omer al-Bashir has been spreading unfounded allegations against the Sudanese Revolutionary Front (SRF) by pointing out that the
(SRF) has taken arms against the state in order to seize the whole country, emphasising that (SRF) is a Zionist project targeting Sudan! He was referring to 8 August 2014, when the National Umma Party (NUP) and the (SRF) signed the Paris Declaration that angered the regime to the core.
The underlying reason behind the unabated anger and rage of Omer al-Bashir’s regime is mainly the convergence between Sadiq al-Mahdi, the number that cannot be bypassed and a former staunch ally of the National Congress Party (NCP) and his convergence with the Sudanese Revolutionary Front (SRF) which al-Bashir considers his arch-foe and fearsome enemy. Al-Bashir considers the (SRF) the threat par excellence to the survival of his ramshackle reign for Sudan.
On the same theme, one of Morocco’s religious Scholars Ahmad al- Raïssouni was reported as saying, “Omar al-Bashir should relinquish power to be closer to Allah and serve his religion and homeland. That would be the best gift for the Islamic Nation and the Islamic Movement. The regime of the National Congress Party rules Sudan under the banner of Islam without applying the teachings of Islam and commits sins “. He attributed his opinion on several most important cases saying that al-Bashir and his group seized power through a military coup against a legitimate government that was impeccable and democratically elected, and that al-Bashir’s regime gets the strongest support to retain power and keep governing only from the army. Furthermore, the Vice President of International Union of Muslim Scholars, which is headed by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, said that al-Bashir has spent a quarter century in power, he and his party aspiring to extend their rule indefinitely, and this usually does not come without the imposition of arbitrary methods. Sheikh Ahmed further stated that al-Bashir’s regime is “emulating those former heads of Arab countries and implementing their approach and the way they took office and stayed which makes it a silly dictatorship! Sheikh Ahmed added, saying, “We know the tales of the constitution and democratic elections, winning the presidency, the unlimited democratic extension periods and overwhelming mass support, and we know their values and stink. Sheikh Ahmed continued saying rather sarcastically, “We know these things and we know their value with Jaafar Nimeiri, Hosni Mubarak, Muammar Gaddafi, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Houari Boumediene, Chadli Bendjedid, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Ould Taya, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, Hafiz Assad, Bashar al-Assad, Saddam Hussein and Ali Abdullah Saleh. ” “Following the example of those is just a silly and vulgar dictatorship argument!”
The people of the homeland Sudan need to end this troubled situation in favour of the establishment of a just and comprehensive peace and democratic transformation and the full achievement of sustainable development in Sudan. The NIF entered Sudan into a mess and it needs decades for digging it out.
No wonder, the regime is capable of buying hirelings to claim themselves as one-man parties who thumb any decisions made by their master of grace in lieu of payment as mentioned by political observers and analyst alike. This behaviour aims at al-Bashir’s winning of the 2015 alleged elections via rigged polls as it done in April 2010, when there was strong evidence of rigging by President Bashir’s National Congress Party. It seems that the regime has taken a preemptive fraudulent action for forging the alleged elections. The fraudulent regime began the wheeling dealings six months before the beginning of holding the alleged elections in April 2015 in spite of the strong objection by the viable political forces that this is contrary to the spirit of the invalid 2005 constitution.
In a move for a new cycle of wars, the NCP regime signed a military cooperation with Qatar. Bearing in mind that Qatar is to buy $23bn worth of weaponry including 24 Apache attack helicopters from the United States of America (US). Journalistic sources indicated the existence of three camps in Kassala, Kordofan and the Red Sea to train terrorists, extremists from the Ansar al-Sharia funded by Qatar to attack Egyptian targets and preparation of foothold for elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Making the Sudan a battlefield for terrorists such as Islamic State in Iraq and Syria –ISIS- ‘Daash and helping their passage to Libya and the Sahel.
The NCP regime has tried to strategize for a new cycle of war crimes in Darfur by invading the area of Tabet in North Darfur where the government troops and proxy militia mass gang raped more than 200 women among them female children on 31 October 2014. Moreover, the NCP military prevented the good – for nothing UNAMID from reaching the site to provide protection for civilians and conduct the investigation and documentation of this heinous crime. The reports indicated that more than 650 NCP Government soldiers on about 25 vehicles attacked the Tabit village to commit the shockingly brutal offensive crime. It is high time for the UN to reevaluate thoroughly the UNAMID force in Darfur, which catastrophically failed in its mission to protect the unarmed civilians from the atrocious crimes committed by the government of Sudan (GoS) army and the allied militias. The reprehensible mass rape crime in Tabit committed by the military of Government of Sudan led by Omer al-Bashir deserves condemnation by the people of the World represented by the international community, humanitarian organisations and every human conscience. The perpetrators must be brought to international justice, taking into account the grave injustice done to the victims. Without doubt, what happened in Tabit is similar to those crimes committed by the (GoS) army at the outbreak of the Revolution of the marginalised people in the region of Darfur more than a decade ago. Rape is a crime motivated by hate, racism, humiliation and destruction of human dignity in the victim by the assailants. Material compensation for the rape crime cannot rehabilitate the victim. Therefore, there are cultures who advocate the death sentence for the perpetrators of the crime of rape. Without doubt, mass rape crimes are crimes against humanity, war crimes and ethnic cleansing crimes as well. Mass rape of is a reprehensible crime that drives the global human conscience to condemn and denounce and demand the application of the maximum punishment the perpetrators deserve.
The National dialogue announced by Omar al-Bashir in January 2014 was intended to distract the Sudanese opposition, both civil and military, from the issues concerning the people of the country to enable him to reach the April 2015 alleged elections to shield and protect himself from being apprehended and handed over to the prosecution of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The NCP regime will not leave the rule of Sudan unless forced out. To achieve that goal the people of Sudan need to resort to the street power of popular uprising protected by the forces of the Sudanese Revolutionary Front (SRF) to safeguard against the brutality of the killing machine of the pro-government so-called National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS).
UNAMID was established in 2008, it costs $i.4 billion dollars a year, making it the world’s most expensive peacekeeping mission. However, is UNAMID worth it? People are asking! Moreover, UNAMID’s Personnel is formed of 20000 soldiers and 500 police. UNAMID was given UN Chapter VII Mandate under the UN Charter, authorizing it the” Responsibility to Protect”.
Consequently, the people of Sudan in Darfur have lost confidence in the UNAMID. Furthermore, people in Darfur are questioning, wondering about the feasibility of the presence of the joint mission in Darfur and whether the mission is unable or not keen on the implementation of its mandate, given the reprehensible crimes of Mass rape in the village of Tabet and the failure of UNAMID.
In these circumstances, there is no way out for the people of Sudan in Darfur and other components of the Sudanese people but the inevitable hard work to join ranks. The joint masses of the Sudanese people must revolt against the National Islamic Front (NIF) entity with the view to oust the criminal regime and build a nation free of al-Bashir and his ilk where true democracy, justice and equality prevail.
Dr. Mahmoud A. Suleiman is an author, columnist and a blogger. His blog is http://thussudan.wordpress.com/