Arab Spring in Sudan Could Resemble Syria: Former PM

By Alexander Dziadosz

KHARTOUM (Reuters) – An Arab Spring-style uprising in Sudan would likely follow the bloody example of Syria or Libya because its armed forces and judiciary are not independent and could be used against its people, former prime minister Sadeq al-Mahdi said on Wednesday.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir gives a speech as he tours the White Nile Sugar Co sugar plant during its opening in Al-Diwaim July 11, 2012.                              Reuters

Sudan has so far not seen the wave of popular unrest that unseated long-serving leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, but austerity measures launched last month to contain an economic crisis have set off anti-government protests.

The demonstrations have rarely gathered more than a few hundred people at a time but discontent over rising food prices and other economic woes worsened by the secession of oil-producing South Sudan a year ago could yet ignite more protests, said Mahdi, who was ousted in the bloodless 1989 coup that brought President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to power.

“All the writing is on the wall … The regime, which has come to power through a coup, has failed. All the programs have failed,” he told Reuters in his compound in the Khartoum suburb of Omdurman.
But he said any uprising was more likely to resemble the one in Syria, where the armed forces are being used to put down a 16-month revolt, than Tunisia, whose veteran leader fled to Saudi Arabia in the face of pro-democracy protests.

“We do not have the same kind of, let us say, national armed forces and neutral, independent judiciary. In both cases in Sudan the two have been politicized, like Syria, Libya and Yemen,” he said.

Mass demonstrations led to the downfall of military rulers in Sudan in 1964 and 1985. In both, the army sided with demonstrators at some point, Mahdi said, but said he was less certain that would happen now.

“The uprising, which is possible, could lead to a Syria scenario or a Libya scenario or a Yemen scenario.”

Sudanese officials dismiss charges that the country’s courts and other institutions are politicized. Bashir said on Wednesday there would be no Arab Spring in Sudan.

Rules of the Game

Mahdi, head of the powerful Muslim Ansar sect and descendent of an Islamic leader who fought the British in the 19th century, became prime minister after his party won democratic elections in the 1980s, but was ousted in 1989.

The Oxford-educated politician spent four years in self-imposed exile in the 1990s, but returned to Sudan in 2000.

Last week, his Umma party signed a document with other major opposition groups calling for strikes, sit-ins and demonstrations to oust the government, but has yet to bring its members onto the streets in force.

Mahdi said Umma’s leadership did not plan to mobilize protesters until after a “shadow peace agreement” with rebel groups in the western Darfur area and in the Blue Nile and South Kordofan states.
The party’s aim was to create political change through negotiations involving a variety of players, including the ruling party, rather than through bloody upheaval, he said.

Young activists have accused the Umma party and other opposition groups of being too compliant with the establishment and reluctant to press hard for change.

But Mahdi said: “We are committed to change, it’s just that we think it is possible that the pressures could make change with less blood. We are not reluctant. We are more experienced, and we know, let us say, the rules of the game.”

Mahdi said the economic situation would continue to fuel sit-ins, strikes and demonstrations. “When will it boil over? I can’t say. But it is there. It will not go away so long as the factors behind it are there,” he said.

(Editing by Janet Lawrence)

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