January 9, 2021 (KHARTOUM) - The Prime Minister has been defamed over his decision to freeze a new school curriculum to replace the old one imposed by the former regime, said Ali Bakhit the director of his cabinet on Saturday.

Abdallah Hamdok who is outside the country has been severely criticised after his decision to stop one of the major reforms in Sudan after the overthrow of the Islamist regime.

In a bid to defend his boss, his close cabinet director Bakhit in an interview to Hikayat newspaper described the resignation letter of Omer al-Qarray the head of the National Curriculum Centre as "a defamation ceremony" against Hamdok.

He revealed that the director did not follow the directives of the prime minister to keep a low profile and to work away from the media or to respond to his critics.

However "He chose to be with the forces of darkness and the Takfiri (radical Islamists)," he said.

The director of the Prime Minister’s Office added that the “efficient and consensual” educational curriculum is one of the pillars of societal peace through which the Prime Minister seeks “to establish a healthy and sound social and national life".

"I find myself not ready to continue with a government brought by a popular revolt, then weakened in front of the military component and caved in to pressure from the remnants of the defeated regime," said Al-Qarray in his resignation letter.

Al-Qarray submitted his resignation on 7 January, in protest against the prime minister’s decision to freeze educational curriculum that replaces the old school textbooks imposed by the former Islamist regime.

Ismail Altaj one of the prominent leaders of the Sudanese Professionals Association, which spearheaded the revolution and picked Hamdok for the position of the prime minister, criticized his decision to freeze the major reform.

Altaj minimized controversy about al-Qarray’s approach to achieve the school textbook reform, stressing that the "true struggle is between those who seek to bring about change in line with the goals of the December Revolution in the field of education reform and those who want to preserve the old system against which the revolution was directed".

He further directed his attacks against Hamdok’s cabinet affairs minister who -according to Altaj - had requested the education minister to send a letter demanding al-Qarray’s removal but the minister refused.

In a related development, the SPLM-N led by Malik Agar and the Sudanese Teachers Committee issued a joint statement calling to achieve a fundamental and structural change in the education system in Sudan to cope with the principles of the Sudanese revolution.

(ST)