Sudan president Al-Bashir intervenes to salvage dispute between his aides
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April 25, 2011 (KHARTOUM) – Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir has
personally intervened to defuse an unfolding crisis between two of his
close aides as officials from his ruling National Congress Party (NCP)
raced to downplay the discord as caused merely by conflict of
mandates.
JPEG - 47.6 kb
Sudan’s Security Presidential Adviser Salah Gosh (L), and Presidential
Assistant Nafi Ali Nafi (R) during peace talks with Darfur rebels in
the Libyan town of Sirte in 2007 (UNMIS)
Presidential adviser Salah Gosh, who currently chairs the Presidential
Security Advisory (PSA), publicly criticized Presidential Assistant
and NCP’s Vice President Nafi Ali Nafi after the latter said in a
radio interview with Sudan Radio on Friday that the dialogue led by
Gosh’s PSA with certain political parties was not sanctioned by the
NCP’s leadership.
Nafi went on to stress that his party would not engage in a dialogue
whose end result would be to weaken his party’s grip on power.
But Gosh said in a press conference a day later on Saturday that
Nafi’s statement represents only him, and that his dialogue enjoys
approval by President Al-Bashir and Vice-President Ali Osman Mohamed
Taha.
Gosh went on to stress that no one had the right to interfere in his
job as long as he is mandated by President Al-Bashir, and that the PSA
dialogue would only stop at the behest of Al-Bashir.
“It is [Nafi’s statement] detrimental to the dialogue and will make
opposition parties run away from it,” Gosh said.
The Gosh-Nafi crisis, as it has become to be known, comes at a time
when the NCP is officially engaged in dialogue with mainstream
opposition parties, namely the National Umma Party (NUP) and the
Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), as tension continues to dominate the
domestic political arena amid worsening economic conditions and a
sense of loss following the secession of South Sudan in a referendum
held in January.
According to a report published on Monday by the privately-owned
Sudanese daily newspaper Al-Tayyar, Al-Bashir convened a meeting on
Sunday evening between Nafi and Gosh.
However, the paper reported that its sources could not confirm the
outcome of the meeting.
Meanwhile, other NCP officials were quick to dismiss the Nafi-Gosh
crisis as a natural matter, citing conflict of mandates as its reason.
“Human genius stipulates that levels of authorities must be separated
so each authority can function within the mandate given to it, this
may look to others as a disagreement,” NCP’s senior member and media
minister Kamal Obayd said on Monday. “This is the kind of disagreement
that leads to goodness, not to misery,” he added.
The NCP’s leading female member Samia Mohamed Ahmad told reports on
Monday that although her party had an independent mechanism for
dialogue with opposition parties, the president also had the right to
task advisory bodies with the same duty.
However, she suggested that the name PSA does not befit the role it is
playing. “It would better to re-name it a political advisory rather
than security advisory” Samia said.
It is to be noted that Salah Gosh said in previous statements that one
of the major obstacles facing the PSA’s operation was the wrong
understanding of its mandate and the perception that it stealthily
represents the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS),
over which he presided until he was relieved from his position in
August 2009.
(ST)
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