Bashir wants to quell revolution through state of emergency: Sudan’s opposition
February 23, 2019 (KHARTOUM) – The imposition of the state of emergency is as an attempt to buy time and quell the “revolution” said the Sudanese opposition forces in response to a speech by President Omer al-Bashir on Friday.
Al-Bashir called on the opposition groups to engage in dialogue with his government based on the National Document endorsed by the National Dialogue Conference in October 2016. Also, he vowed to be impartial and remain neutral in the management of the political process.
General Secretary of the opposition National Umma Party (NUP) Sarah Nugdallah said in a statement released Saturday that the president’s statement was “disappointing”.
“The speech of the President of the Republic is clear and isolated procrastination intended to gain time only, and waiting for the unknown that will never come … Therefore we are not concerned by its content because it is far from resolving the crisis.”
Nugdallah further pointed out that the Sudanese can no longer be lured with the ministerial reshuffle and similar solutions.
“The rebellious street will no longer accept less than the departure of the regime, with all its figures, and without conditions,” she said before to stress that the “National Umma Party stands with this demand firmly, and will continue its peaceful struggle with its masses, and its allies of the Forces of Freedom and Change to achieve this just demand”.
The Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) said the Sudanese president made the most deceptive speech at a political event ever.
The president tried to “circumvent the merits of the revolution by calling for a false national dialogue similar to the dialogue (of 2016),” said JEM spokesperson Mutasim Ahmed Saleh on Saturday.
He added that the president declared the state of emergency to unleash his security militias to kill the people and abuse them in order to “put down their glorious revolution”.
“The movement rejects Bashir’s insulting speech, and calls on the masses of the Sudanese people to step up the struggle and on the forces of change to unite their ranks and form a united leadership abroad to support the interior,” he proposed.
For his part, the SPLM-N Agar deputy chairman Yasir Arman said that the main purpose of Bashir’s speech is to suppress the Revolution through emergency measures and take full control of the organs of the state to prevent any independent role of the army or the Islamists.
“So, by the end of the one-year emergency period, the political theatre would be engineered to re-elect Bashir,” he said.
Accordingly, he added that al-Bashir and his regime do not have solutions to the current crisis and continuing the revolution remains the only valid alternative.
“Al-Bashir’s speech is a declaration of the beginning of his defeat, the defeat of his regime and the beginning of the victory of the popular revolution,” he asserted.
Also; The Sudan Liberation Movement – Minni Minnawi called to stand against the state of emergency and “continue the intifada until victory.”
Al-Bashir resorted to old new tricks to confront the escalation of the mass “by announcing the state of emergency and the militarization of the government in preparation for a further confrontation with the street,” said SLM-MM spokesperson Mohamed Hassan Haroun.
(ST)