North Sudan’s ruling party risks implosion as internal rifts come into view
* Article
* Comments (0)
email Email
print Print
pdfSave
separation
increase
decrease
separation
separation
*
*
*
*
By Muhammad Osman
April 24, 2011 (NAIROBI) - North Sudan’s governing National Congress
Party (NCP) has more than once proved to be able to overcome divisions
– but a rare show of discord between senior party officials this week
has indicated it might be teetering on the edge of implosion.
JPEG - 28.2 kb
Presidential Security Adviser Salah Gosh (Upper Left), NCP’s
Vice-President and Presidential Assistant Nafi Ali Nafi (Upper Right),
Vice-President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha (Lower left), Sudan’s President
and NCP’s chairman Omar Al-Bashir (lower right)
Since the 1999 schism in the NCP, which saw the party split in two as
supporters of ousted Islamist leader Hassan Al-Turabi broke away to
form the opposition Popular Congress Party (PCP), the party has
successfully defied predictions of collapse in the face of several
crises.
The most notable of those was the issue of the International Criminal
Court (ICC), whose arrest warrant for President Al-Bashir for
atrocities committed in the country’s western region of Darfur
prompted analysts to speculate it would shake the NCP’s chain of
command.
But it has emerged this week that the NCP’s top leadership is at odds
over how to deal with opposition parties and Al-Turabi. Al-Turabi has
been detained since January after he warned the government it would
face a popular uprising modelled on those seen elsewhere in the Arab
world if it continued to resist calls for reforms.
The story began on Friday, 22 April, when the NCP’s Vice-President
Nafi Ali Nafi directed criticism at the dialogue conducted with
certain opposition parties by his colleague Salah Gosh, the former
intelligence chief who currently serves as a presidential adviser for
security affairs.
According to Nafi, who was speaking in a radio interview with Sudan
Radio, the dialogue led by Gosh under the umbrella of the Presidential
Security Advisory, which he chairs, was not sanctioned by the party’s
leadership.
Nafi, who often stands out as a hardliner with no qualms about making
derogatory remarks against opposition parties, asserted that his party
would not negotiate over demands for a transitional or national
government to serve as “a tool to weaken” his party or turn it into “a
minority group.”
“If they [opposition parties] want this [a national government] they
should wait until next elections,” he said.
A day later on Saturday, Salah Gosh held a press conference in which
he contradicted his colleague’s statement, stressing that the dialogue
he leads was approved by the NCP’s Chairman President Al-Bashir and
second Vice-President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha.
“It is [Nafi’s statement] detrimental to the dialogue and will make
opposition parties run away from it,” Gosh said, blowing the lid off
his dissatisfaction with Nafi’s position.
Sudan’s former Prime minister and leader of the opposition National
Umma Party (NUP), Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi, whose party is currently engaged
in dialogue with the NCP over what he loosely terms as “the national
agendas,” has previously blamed the wing of hardliners within the NCP
for scuttling the National Reconciliation Agreement, which his party
signed with the NCP in May 2008.
Further disagreements within the NCP’s leadership were manifested when
Nafi denied, in the same interview, the existence of any calls within
his party for the release or trial of Al-Turabi, contrasting with
statements by the NCP’s Vice-President in Khartoum State Mandour
Al-Mahdi who said it was the view of his party that the veteran
opposition leader should either be tried or released immediately.
“Anyone who served the legal detention period should be either brought
to a trial or released,” Mandor told a press conference on Saturday.
It remains a possibility that the NCP, which has ruled the country
since seizing power in a military coup backed by Islamists in 1989,
will manage to prevent internal discord from getting any more public
than it already is.
But simmering disagreements may lead to implosion which could
complicate the party’s situation at a time when it is faced with
growing public discontent over lack of political reforms and worsening
economic conditions.
The writer is an associate editor of Sudan Tribune. He can be reached
on [email protected]
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "JFD
info" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected].
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/jfdinfo?hl=en.
