Sudan: Still A Long Way to Go and Many Mentalities to Change

During the Sudanese state governors’ forum in Wau on 5th–6th May 2009, the SPLM and its counterpart, the Islamic NCP of President Al Bashir, each went into length with discussions which basically looked more of an election campaign. As usual the people of south Sudan were yet to live with promises of building the railways, highways, electricity, and the introduction of mechanized farming, bla...bla...bla..

But, as if to tell everybody that not all that was promised could be achieved, the GoNU Finance Minister Al-Jazz told the gathering that the economy in the country is actually in crisis due to the decline in the oil revenues. Meanwhile, Machar pushed the talk toward discussion of the future of New Sudan.

Lastly, it seems that the ruling NCP of Al Bashir had success in gaining the former southern rebels of the SPLM on its side before embarking on what to do in the 2009 July elections which has been maliciously pushed for February 2010.

The NCP dictated how and when the National Census was conducted, and now as the rival SPLM was forced into carrying out the Census despite its initial furious opposition, is made also to swallow the type of figures it wouldn't accept, if at all it is to run for the elections.

The Sudanese presidency has now officially approved the results of the fifth census conducted a year ago, in the presence of the Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir, First Vice President Salva Kiir and 2nd Vice President Ali Osman Taha.

Though the official results only revealed the total population as 39 million without going into details,  the Al-Sahafa independent has already leaked it out the population of south Sudan at 8.2 million, to the southerners' disappointment.

In another development President Kiir is quoted by the New Sudan Vision to have said that the  sharp reduction in the population in the South to five million is not acceptable, thus making the figure even more confusing.

Though the SPLM Secretary General Pagan Amum has aired his concern that the South may boycott the upcoming 2010 elections if they decide that the census outcome is unacceptable, he went as far as suggesting that the results could be adjusted based on the 1956 census.

The SPLM Deputy Secretary-General for the Northern Sector, Yasser Arman, was quoted in the media that the President of the Government of South Sudan, and First Vice President of the Republic, Salva Kiir Mayardit, has expressed big reservations on the basic 5th population census results endorsed by the Presidency. He said that Kiir's reservations stressed on the importance to revise the census figures of many areas in the south and North.

What I don’t see here is, why did we have the wrong Census in the first place if we well knew that we are not going to be happy with the  figures as it was obvious from the very start? And what does it actually signify, if we are now seemingly saying that we should either use the 1956 Census percentages as a way out or we boycott the election process altogether?

One can soundly argue that south Sudan’s population claimed at 22% of the total population would give it less in the wealth and power sharing, and that is true. But it is also virtually true that the southern population that was estimated at 33%, still had no power and no wealth as it went to the betterment of individuals and clan maintenance. The banks are currently empty and the money we received at 33% is not reflecting in any public satisfaction.

I hope we should be very clear by now on our misplaced delusions about the united New Sudan. The CPA was well planned to test all the theories harbored by the Sudanese political groups. Now that SPLM has clearly shown that it is struggling to face the coming National Elections and it has also failed dramatically to secure the marginalized people at the Presidency, it is time for it to review its stand.

It is either that the adopted New Sudan Vision of unity is indeed the right theory being headed by the wrong people or the wrong theory imposed on  the right people by some outside forces?  So, where is the SPLM’s position here?

When the 2010 elections come and go, many south Sudanese will find it really inevitable to come up with a better political modality which can secure to the southerners an independent nation and good governance.

Our media is now filled with our financial setbacks. It has taken every one by surprise that the total oil revenue for February and March 2009 was $47.54 million and $90 million respectively. These figures contrast sharply with the three digit revenue figures reported in November of $347.79 and $608 million in October.

And recently in Wau, the top agenda discussed was the economic downturn. As it is apparent money is not Kiir’s problem, because even at these critical times our big man still had the lion’s heart to donate thousands of dollars to the Kenyan University in his appreciation of the Honorary Doctorate degree bestowed on him.

But now that the oil figures for the months of February and March are not even enough to keep the GoSS cronies and pay for their foreign travels, should the President and the Assembly not better still close down some of the Ministries like the Interior, Regional Cooperation and the Legal Affairs as we can all see their practical absence in the south as well as the irrelevance of having to pay them at this time.

What we need is a ministry of caretakers and National Bereavement units who can console the abandoned victims of widespread insecurities throughout the south.

Also what I do not understand is this money being cut for supporting the assumed and delusional Unity of the country. Who is benefiting from this fund, as we thought that the free hand given to the GoSS and the state governments to use the public money without any accountability was enough support for the people in office to stand by Unity?

As Omer al Bashir had put it in one of his interviews to an Egyptian paper 'Al Shorug,' that at this time of crisis and widespread insecurities in the south and GoSS’s misrule, over 40% of the southern Sudanese have already made up their minds to vote for Unity.  

For him, it is just a matter of time, given the fact of the escalating insecurity in the South and the other crises that the SPLM and its partner the NCP are systematically exposing the southerners to, President al Bashir expects the number of the unionists to increase amongst the southern population.

Anyway the south Sudanese masses are there to show their reactions and give their a clear answer to al Bashir as well as his  2nd Vice President  Ali Osman Taha, when the time comes.  Taha dared during the state governors meeting in Wau to call all those South Sudanese Nationalists as greedy separatists and idiots or mere brainless people.

I hope he is being fair enough to everyone including his fellow Islamist Dr. Hamdy the former Federal minister of Finance and Al Tayeb Mustafa a prominent pan Arabist and Islamst who own the pro-National Islamic Front newspaper “Intibah”, who on many occasions have called and propagated for the formation of the all Arab independent polar state of central Sudan, to include the triangle of Dongolla, Sennar, and Kordofan, thus making it as much as can be forged in the racial admixed Sudan into a homogenous Arab and Islamic entity as possible.

He also went ahead and described the separatists as those who do not like their brothers to eat with them: they do not “have a vision of brotherhood and definitely they are young people roughing into politics.” Taha added.

For Ali Osman Taha, the South–North relationship has just boiled down to eating public money, as is the case with the old politicians the way he put it. It is true that the new breed of the south Sudanese nationalists have not joined the Arab Islamists in feasting on the Sudanese] peoples’ flesh.

We, the separatists haven’t eaten anything and we do not want to be a party to the “eating Sudanese elites”, and the other half cultivated intellectuals who depend on handouts from the ruling SPLM or the NCP. At least he is aware that there are young people in the south who resent any corrupted association in the current Sudanese malicious call for misguided unity in a country whose unity records are none but heaps of human skulls wherever you look for it in the entire country.

It is the obvious lack of the necessary political will by the NCP in implementing the CPA that has dealt the fatal blow to the anticipated unity which some day-dreaming politicians are still awaiting its endorsement by the southerners in the 2011 referendum. A thing clearly unlikely to happen, despite all the NCP rhetoric.

In Wau, Taha also went further to invite the youth to join trainings being organized in Khartoum, targeted at developing skills for using the internet for government propaganda. He added that they (NCP) would train those youth and provide them with laptop computers to ease their job to deal with ICC allegations over the over Al Bashir’s indictment.

The Sudanese government’s position on President Al Bashir’s indictment came weak and too late. So for Ali Osman Taha to extend an open invitation to recruit the Sudanese youth in what looks like the old days Mujahedeen training camps to wage a media war against the ICC and its Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno–Acampo, really sounds very strange.

I know that Ali Osman has been the brain behind most of the Islamic propagandas that drove the Sudanese communities wild in a polarized pattern during the second civil war, but still I cannot grasp how this Islamist thinker and planner intends to defeat the ICC by putting all the Sudanese youth behind the keyboards?

Even though the NCP’s position concerning the Sudanese elections seems apparently more comfortable as they would want to portray it, but awaiting issues like constituencies borders and the Abyei crisis which is currently awaiting the international courts decision, can still pose a threat to the national security and a set back for the elections itself.

However, the Secretary-General commended both parties' reiteration in the Abyei Roadmap Agreement and commitment to abide by and implement the decision of the Abyei Arbitral Tribunal. He encourages the two CPA signatories to achieve a peaceful final settlement to this dispute and to further strengthen their relationship as partners for peace in Sudan.

This very same NCP not long ago did give its word to abide by the Abyei Border Commission, but when the ruling came not in its favor, it was quick to condemn the commission for having exceeded its mandate.  Where does all this leave us with the Abyei Issue which is awaiting an International decision?

Who will not agree with me that Khartoum, backed by the local Misseriya Arab community, will refuse still to abide by the ruling that comes from The Hague on the Abyei borders if not to their favor?

I would also want to draw everybody’s attention here that the referendum to take place in January 2011 is not even safe as long as we are not a match enough to the NCP in rallying the world opinion on our side by showing responsible governance. Whom do you trust outside there to fight on our side if we are only known as a bunch of corrupted tribal communities who are down bent to abuse the autonomous rule that we are having now?

I know that many out there are counting on the US administration to actually see things going on in the Sudan. The new Obama administration has chosen diplomacy over direct confrontation with the Khartoum Islamists and its new envoy to the Sudan is yet all words, yet what is needed is real action.

Mr. Gration, after meeting prominent northern and southern government officials, on his second visit to the Sudan said, "We want to see elections that are carried out, elections that are credible," "It is our decision that we will support the referendum, that we'll support the CPA (2005 peace deal), and we'll push very hard that it's fully implemented," he assured them.

What Gration has voiced though reflects a new approach by a new regime, but we know how cunning the Khartoum based Islamists are especially in the art of buying time. It is clear that the Americans are counting on fair elections in the Sudan, with the hope that such an exercise might change the situation in the country. Yet the Khartoum is not all that naïve to go wholesale with the US initiatives, and they (NCP) will do all that it takes to retain power.

Talking of rigging the Sudanese elections, one can only say that the whole process has already started by the delays that preceded the National Population Census, its disputed results, the absence of voters registry until now, and the new Sudanese Political Parties Registration Committee formed only in 2008 between the NCP (6) and the SPLM (3) is also another advanced step towards the total rigging of the coming elections and many others yet to come.

Some political parties have already started to feel the pinch even the ones that have existed decades ago with their names carrying connotations like being “African“ were denied the right to register as it is the case with those who clearly spelt the separation of south Sudan in their constitutions.

Whatsoever the case would be these political parties beliefs are widely shared among a broad base of the southern Sudanese masses and they can still enter the Parliament as Independent candidates with well founded “Black African and south Sudanese nationalistic ideologies”, for these believes are genuinely and widely shared amongst the people of the south Sudan who fought the five decades war.

But going back to the core issue at hand, is how the Sudanese presidency is intending to solve the National Census results. So far an official break down of the 39 million has not been released. What we see in the media are figures putting the south’s population between 5 and 8.2 million and obviously the southerners are not happy about this. To come with the acceptable figure of 33% (13 million), which is the figure that can be accepted by the SPLM and the other southern political parties to participate in the 2010 elections remains to be the next battle between the north–south political divide in the Sudan.

Though the former census official Abdel Baqi Al-Jailani have been named by President Al Bashir to replace the ICC wanted Ahmed Haroun (the architect of the Darfur massacres),  as a state minister for Humanitarian Affairs in the GoNU for the great job he has done for his ruling party by cooking the Census results, our new doctorate degree holder from the Great Lakes University, Kisumu, Kenya, Salva Kiir Mayardit  still has his chance to do some miracle at the Presidency and have the population figures for the south adjusted to no less than one third of the total in line with the southerners aspirations, before he finally declares either to run against Al Bashir or to turn around and endorse an NCP candidacy for the post

Dr. Justin Ambago Ramba
Secretary General
United South Sudan Party (USSP)