Obsession With The National Congress Party

Rashid Abdelrahim
Mr Mohamed Sayed Ahmed Al-Jakoumi said that President Al-Burhan had revealed a secret to them: that the National Congress Party had carried out ten coup attempts.
Mr Al-Jakoumi did not tell us when these coups were supposed to have taken place.
Naturally, they must have occurred while President Al-Burhan was in power, which he assumed in 2019.
By that measure, the National Congress Party would have been carrying out almost one coup attempt every year.
During this period, the war broke out and continued for three years. That would mean the National Congress Party was attempting a coup roughly every five months.
Yet the Sudanese people had heard nothing about any of these attempts before Al-Jakoumi’s remarks.
Al-Jakoumi is not alone. Nor is he the only person seeking power and office by aiming at the “target board” of the National Congress Party. Everyone — including the Sumoud group — does the same. They do so to ingratiate themselves with the West and the United States.
Who actually loses when the National Congress Party is excluded from government? Or from the national dialogue?
It is the government itself that loses, because in doing so it is committing a dictatorial act at the very moment when it is supposedly preparing to establish and entrench the values of freedom, justice and equal rights.
We can understand a government decision to dissolve a party and prevent it from operating under its own name. But how can it prevent an individual citizen from exercising their right to vote or stand for election?
If the government excludes the National Congress Party from political participation, it will create a dialogue, parliament or system of government whose legitimacy will inevitably be called into question.
We would then have a government born out of fear, rather than the confidence befitting strong and free people unafraid to establish a just system of government and safeguard the right of the Sudanese people to have a government founded on democratic values.
Sumoud — whom the Chairman of the Sovereignty Council is trying to appease by announcing that its members will be allowed to return to the country and by cancelling legal proceedings against them — responded to this announcement with arrogance and brazenness. The United States, which they are also trying to please, will be even more arrogant and brazen, because, as former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said, it does not pay for what has already been given to it in advance.
Sumoud seeks power and looks to the outside world for help in obtaining it, while exerting pressure on the government to return its members to office. Yet it failed to preserve the power it had already been given, and it was unable to accomplish even the most basic requirements of government. The National Congress Party, by contrast, achieved considerable success in government — success that many Sudanese now long to see repeated.
Neither Al-Jakoumi, nor the leaders of Sumoud, nor the Chairman of the Sovereignty Council have been able to overcome their fear of the National Congress Party. Their fear will become even greater if the war ends and they establish the government they seek.
The Islamists will not bring that government down, because they have said that they will adopt the position of a supportive opposition. Rather, the government will collapse from within, because it will have been founded on fear, and from its very first days it will begin to lose the justification for its own continued existence.

Shortlink: https://sudanhorizon.com/?p=16926