From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Tue Aug 25 2009 - 07:47:16 EDT
Wake up call for Sudan
A threat by the secretary-general of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement
to take his party out of the Sudanese parliament has called a referendum on
the country's future into question, writes Asmaa Al-Husseini
20 - 26 August 2009
Issue No. 961
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/961/re9.htm
_____
John Garang, leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), was
once quoted as saying that "the Sudanese will not go to heaven or hell."
Asked how this was possible, he replied, laughing, that "on Judgement Day,
the Sudanese will arrive too late, after the doors to heaven and hell have
already been closed."
Something similar is true of the situation in Sudan today, for the Sudanese
have not been able to attain the unity they so desperately need. Sudan has
spent a third of the transitional period trying to reach a peace agreement,
but the country has not been able to achieve either separation, which had
been thought by some in the north and south to be an easier solution than
unification, or real unity. As a result, the Sudanese today are caught in
the middle, neither able to reach heaven or hell, unity or separation.
Bagan Amum, secretary-general of the SPLM, has indicated that any
postponement of the referendum in the south of the country will turn the
transition in Sudan into a hellish period. The south is threatening to exit
parliament early if the ruling National Congress Party (NCP), headed by
Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir, puts obstacles in the path of conducting
the referendum in 2011.
Amum has said that the SPLM is prepared to give the NCP until the end of the
year to endorse the referendum. "If the southern Sudanese do not find unity
to be in their interests, they will turn to secession," he has said, "which
would not be a difficult decision. Sudan previously experienced a
parliamentary secession in 1956. The NCP is still not able to deal with the
national and international political reality."
Amum's words have stirred up a storm both inside and outside Sudan, and they
have raised concerns about the survival of the unified country. The NCP
considers his words to be unacceptable and a departure from ordinary
discourse, as well as an act of rebellion against the interim constitution.
Political analysts, on the other hand, see the words more as an attempt by
the SPLM to blackmail the NCP, in order to reap greater concessions. They
think it quite likely that the SPLM will act on its threats if the NCP does
not allow the SPLM to participate in the NCP programme.
As one analyst commented, "the possibility of secession has become more
likely in Sudan, and it could happen at any moment, considering that the
peace agreement created an independent south."
Amum's words have raised a variety of important issues touching on the
background to the present crisis.
Firstly, the exiting of the south from the country's parliament has been
talked about before as one of the options facing southern leaders. However,
Amum's words represent the first official comment on the issue, even if he
is not the first secretary-general of the SPLM to notice the growing trend
in the south towards secession. It has long been said that 90 per cent of
southerners would vote to secede if the referendum is not granted now.
Moreover, the present dispute between the two groups sharing power in Sudan
is not the first, and it will not be the last. The relationship between the
two groups over the past four years has fluctuated like the tide, with
differences between them receding during the transition period because of
the overwhelming problems facing the country and the details of the peace
agreement signed in 2005.
There is also the issue of the different intellectual and political
legitimacies of the two parties. The dispute reached its peak when the SPLM
withdrew its ministers from the central government, refusing to return them
until the government responded to its demands.
Amum's statement also came after verbal attacks on him made by the NCP and
its supporters after he spoke before the Commission on African Affairs of
the US Congress. In his speech to the Commission, Amum urged Congress not to
normalise US relations with Khartoum and not to take Sudan off the US list
of state sponsors of terrorism.
Amum justified his comments by saying that "American officials requested
that the NCP fulfil its commitments before relations are normalised with
Sudan, including finding a solution to the crisis in Darfur, carrying out
the peace agreement in the south, and working towards a transition to
democracy in the country."
The most recent disputes between the two parties concern the SPLM's refusal
to accept the electoral roll and proposals on how the referendum will be
carried out. While the NCP believes that if the south wants to secede from
Sudan, then a 75 per cent majority vote must be achieved, the SPLM thinks 51
per cent should suffice.
There is also a dispute over the right to vote in the referendum. The SPLM
argues that only those southerners currently living in the south should have
the right to vote, with those who have moved to the north being excluded
from the referendum, while the NCP argues that even southerners in the north
should be eligible to vote.
Furthermore, there is a dispute over voting centres and even over ballot
boxes. Should there be two boxes, one for unity and the other for secession,
or one ballot box? It has also not been decided who will conduct the
referendum commission, nor the number of commission members, nor who will
monitor the referendum, nor how the referendum will be conducted.
While Amum has been intensifying and escalating the conflict with the NCP,
the reaction of SPLM leader Salva Kiir Mayardit has thus far been one of
calmness and flexibility, though this leaves open the question of how far
this is a tactic on his part and how far the difference of approach signals
disagreement among members of the movement. Whatever the reason for the
apparent contradiction, the SPLM has a history of putting pressure on the
NCP to get what it wants.
As well as raising questions about the SPLM's real motives, Amum's statement
raises the questions of what chances there are now that unity can be
achieved and what the exiting of the SPLM from the government could mean for
the country. It also raises the question of whether Amum had abandoned the
SPLM's official line.
According to Nasreddin Kushayb, chairman of the SPLM in Egypt, Amum's
threats of the south's leaving parliament and not waiting for the referendum
in 2011 are a natural reaction to the actions of the NCP, since the latter
has been trying to make secession impossible for the south.
Kushayb added that the "unity of Sudan will not be achieved through
oppression or coercion, but by making unity an attractive choice and then
allowing the south to vote on it. In this way, the south would retain its
rights and feel a part of Sudan and connected to the north."
He said that the leaders of the SPLM were aware that secession would not be
an easy process and that it could produce dire consequences for all
Sudanese, in both the north and the south. Secession was not the SPLM's
goal, Kushayb said, but the party had been described as an extremist group
by other parties, which were talking about the possibility of secession to
the media.
He warned that if Al-Bashir's party continued in its present direction, then
this would provoke a more violent reaction from the SPLM. Kushayb criticised
what he called the fierce attacks made by the NCP on the SPLM, and talked
about the failure of the policies promoted by Yasser Arman, deputy
secretary-general of the SPLM, which he criticised for not focusing on the
main issues.
Amum had been attacked from within the SPLM simply for his candour and for
telling the facts as they were and without equivocation, Kushayb said.
Arman, Amum and others in the SPLM leadership have accused the NCP of being
behind the recent tribal clashes in the south and of being behind arming the
Murli tribe to fight the Dinka. According to Kushayb, "we have evidence of
the involvement of the NCP in arming the tribes, particularly in Southern
Kordofan."
According to the Sudanese Islamic thinker Hassan Makki, president of the
World African University, Amum believes in the unity of Sudan, despite his
rivalry with the NCP, because he and Arman are against the separatists in
the SPLM. However, both Amum and Arman differ from the NCP in that they want
a secular state.
Leaders of the SPLM who want unity do not want to support it in public,
Makki said, because this could risk their losing political support. If they
appear to submit to the NCP's unity agenda, this will leave them with
nothing to negotiate with and will undermine attempts to put pressure on the
Khartoum government to give the south special privileges.
For all that, the threat of the south's secession does not seem to be
inspiring as much fear as it used to about the fate of the country among the
Sudanese political parties. Nor has it stirred up much intention to try to
work against what may now be the inevitable fate of the country.
In fact, Amum's threat of secession can be taken as an early warning of the
kinds of problems that could come if such issues are left unattended. The
issues that he has raised are only the tip of the iceberg, and there are
deeper problems lurking below that could further threaten the country's
stability.
Such problems will not be solved without a true agreement among all the
parties, including the opposition parties that are threatening to boycott
the forthcoming elections.
An agreement of this sort would act as a rudder, steering the ship of Sudan
safely to shore in the face of storms on every side.
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