Sudan: General al-Burhane announces a new Transitional Council, without the pro-civil bloc

Published on : 11/11/2021 – 19:18

Bis repetita in Sudan. After the fall in 2019 of dictator Omar al-Bashir, a Sovereignty Council, made up of civilians and soldiers, was set up to oversee the transition to democracy under the presidency of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane. The putschist leader announced, Thursday, November 11, a new Sovereignty Council of which he keeps the head and from which the representatives of the bloc demanding a transfer of power to civilians were excluded.

On October 25, General al-Burhane dissolved all institutions, declared a state of emergency and arrested most of the country’s civilian leaders.

For days, the military had been announcing the “imminent” formation of authorities to lead the country towards free elections, claiming only to have had to dismiss civilian leaders who did not agree with them on the path to be taken towards democracy. .

The government, of which several ministers are still detained and Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok under house arrest, has so far not been replaced and its members continue to claim to be the only “legitimate” authorities in the country.

General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, known as “Hemedti”, at the head of the very powerful Rapid Support Forces, paramilitaries accused of abuses in the Darfur region (west) or during the repression of the anti-Bashir revolt, remains his number two.

Fourteen members of the Sovereignty Council

The new Sovereignty Council, like the old one, has 14 members. However, only 13 names were announced by the Sudan TV presenter. The fourteenth member is to represent the east of the country, where protesters have blocked Sudan’s commercial hub, Port Sudan, and its docks for a month and a half, and has clearly not yet been accepted by all.

Of the 13 names announced, only four are new. In place of the four representatives of the Forces for Freedom and Change (FLC), the union of civil forces born out of the anti-Bashir revolt, some of whom were arrested on the day of the coup, four non-political figures supporters were chosen.

Among them is Abu al-Qassem Bortoum, a businessman who had pleaded for normalization with Israel – a flagship project of the military in power since 2019 -, posed as a condition by Washington to remove Sudan from its blacklist of states. supporting “terrorism”. Aged 55, he was a deputy under Omar al-Bashir and today manages agricultural and transport companies.

Another new member of the board: Salma al-Mubarak, from a large Sufi family in Sudan. Without a political past, she is the second woman on the Council with Raja Nicola, the representative of the Coptic Christian minority who retains her post.

The nine members who remain on the Sovereignty Council are representatives of the army or armed rebel groups who signed peace with Khartoum at the end of 2020 after years of deadly conflicts in the four corners of the country.

Tuesday, the Troika (Great Britain, United States and Norway) in the maneuver on the Sudanese file for years, had called on the general Burhane not to take “unilateral decision”, urging him to reinstall Abdallah Hamdok in his functions.

European ambassadors on Thursday met deposed Foreign Minister Mariam al-Sadeq al-Mahdi, once again calling for “the return to constitutional order” and “the immediate release of detainees”, ministers, protesters, activists and even passers-by , arrested in recent weeks.

Despite everything, these mass arrests did not weaken the determination of the supporters of a transfer of power to the civilian population. They are calling for a new “demonstration of the million” on Saturday.

AFP