Al-Mirghani’s son withdraws expulsion decision of senior DUP figures

August 18, 2015 (KHARTOUM) – The eldest son of the chairman of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the de-facto party leader Mohamed al-Hassan al-Mirghani reversed an order he issued earlier this year by which he expelled several of the DUP’s leading figures.

Al-Mirghani was quoted by Sudan news agency (SUNA) today as saying that an internal DUP committee to be formed by the party chairman would be looking into the issue and submitting recommendations.

The DUP chief Mohamed Osman al-Mirghani has been gone abroad for almost two years amid rumors that he is suffering from some form of dementia.

His son, who has not been politically active throughout the DUP history, made an apparent move to fill the void left by his father’s absence and orchestrated the party’s participation in the general elections of last April despite stiff opposition from senior DUP figures.

In what appeared to be a rebellion, dozens of these figures sought to move the courts to nullify the DUP participation in the elections on the grounds that al-Hassan has no authority or capacity within the party to be its representative before the National Elections Commission (NEC).

Al-Hassan retaliated and fired 17 DUP of the dissenting figures in early March. But last week his father issued a statement stressing that he has not sacked any party member and distanced himself from this move.

But al-Hassan dismissed the statement as fabricated and suggested that DUP spokesperson Ibrahim al-Mirghani forged it. He insisted that the expulsion order stand before succumbing to his father’s directives.

The discord between the house of al-Mirghani and other senior DUP figures has grown more public in recent years with the latter accusing the former of turning the party into a chapter of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP).

The DUP left opposition ranks and joined the “broad-based” government of the NCP in December 2011, citing the “need to save the country” in the words of Mohamed Osman al-Mirghani himself.

The decision of one of Sudan’s biggest opposition parties to join the government has created a great deal of internal dissent that saw many members quitting in protest. The party received three ministries in the federal cabinet and continues to serve under this allocation.

(ST)