Shakespeare's Julius Caesar preferred obese henchmen around him because he distrusted lean men as hungry and dangerous. Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir in sharp contrast has raw-boned and sinewy, even athletic aides surrounding him. The portly Al-Bashir is ailing, or so it is rumoured in Khartoum. He walks with his trademark walking stick, but he also dances with his cane in public, so it is a discomfiting political satire to depict Al-Bashir as unwell. In fact it is Al-Bashir's ruling National Congress Party that appears to be queasy about its political future. “What will happen if Al-Bashir steps down?” Osman Mirghani wrote in the pan-Arab London-based daily Asharq Al-Awsat. Al-Bashir is sorely needed in the NDC because he has managed over the past 24 years to unite the contending factions within his party. The problem is that his closest associates, the upper echelons of the army, are fast aging. Al-Bashir needs an infusion of fresh youthful blood by his side. “One cannot help but feel bewildered by the uproar over Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir's decision not to stand in the forthcoming elections, making room for another candidate from the ruling National Congress Party (or shall we say the Islamist movement ruling the country behind this party's façade)? Such talk is nothing new; it was mooted frequently in the past few years and even by Al-Bashir himself on more than one occasion. So why has it elicited this uproar now? This state of confusion is heightened by the fact that it is still too early to speak about the forthcoming presidential elections, which are scheduled for 2015,” Mirghani bemoans. The veteran professional politicians within the ruling party are distrustful of military men in their midst. There are also powerful lobbies against change in the NDC. The most influential political public figures are Nafie Ali Nafie, deputy chairman of the NDC and his arch-rival Mohamed Othman Taha, Sudan's first vice president, but also a leading personality in the ruling party. Nafie was not groomed for politics, but he is a seasoned politician. His doctoral thesis was in genetics. Nafie, like President Al-Bashir himself, hails from the Jailiyin Arabised tribe scattered across the vast rural hinterland of Shendi, a town in the riverain region to the north of Khartoum. “The regime's plot to stay in power, albeit in a different form, continues today through the provocation of artificial controversy over Al-Bashir's decision not to run for president, followed by the leaking of scenarios to convince him to run under the pretext that ‘the country is passing through an exceptional stage,' as put forward by a number of ruling party figures. There have been a number of striking statements issued to this effect, including one by Ali Osman Taha, vice president of Sudan and “Emir” of the ruling Islamist movement,” Mirghani postulates in Asharq Al-Awsat. While the Arab press focussed on President Al-Bashir's release of political prisoners, Sudanese papers preferred to concentrate on the national dialogue put forward by Al-Bashir instead. “The Doha Agreement between the Justice and Equality Movement [the most powerful Darfur armed opposition group] and the Sudanese government is our gift to Africa,” Nafie was quoted as saying in the Sudanese daily Ar-Rai Al-Aam. The paper also quoted Nafie as saying “the belief that Sudan is disappointed in Egypt is not true”. In the same paper the head of the National Congress Party Hassan Al-Turabi expressed a different view. “After extended discussions with Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi in Khartoum, we did not discuss domestic Sudanese affairs. I have no knowledge of an Egyptian initiative to mediate between the Islamist government and opposition in Sudan. Sudanese domestic affairs ought to be discussed at international forums and not at a regional level,” Al-Turabi was quoted in Ar-Rai Al-Aam. Self-censorship is prevalent among Sudanese pundits and the case of the incarceration of Kamal Hassan Al-Bakhit, editor of Al-Sahafa, in 2000 is still cited as an example of the lack of freedom of expression in Sudan. Al-Bakhit was later released and became editor-in-chief of Ar-Rai Al-Aam, but was promptly dismissed in 2009 after criticising President Al-Bashir. Sudanese commentators are deemed defensive and eventually doomed if they dare speak their minds. “We need to have a real dialogue, not between the different factions of the political elite, but rather within the Sudanese public at large,” Noureddin Mohamed Othman wrote in the Sudanese daily Al-Sudani. “The Northern Sector of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM-N) has rejected an offer of negotiations by the Sudanese first Vice President Ali Othman Taha,” Mustafa Sirri warned in Asharq Al-Awsat. The SPLM-N has instead opted to hold negotiations with the Sudanese government under UN Security Council Resolution 2046. Taha is of the powerful Arabised Shaigiya tribe. Both Nafie and Taha have their own factions within the NDC. The SPLM-N declared that Taha's offer reflected a crisis within the ruling regime, and insists on a comprehensive and complete solution, with the participation of all political forces and civil society organisations. “SPLM-N Secretary General Yasser Arman told Asharq Al-Awsat that Taha's statements signify a regime seeking legitimacy, and trying to use its adversaries in this effort,” Sirri expounded. “Meanwhile Amnesty International said in a statement that the Sudanese Armed Forces and militias supporting it have launched large-scale attacks on civilians in northern Darfur. It described the attacks as the worst example of violence in recent years. Amnesty also said that border guard forces affiliated to the military intelligence took part in these attacks which have left more than 500 dead so far this year, and forced nearly 100,000 to flee since violence erupted on 5 January, according to UN reports,” Sirri concluded. There was much jubilation in the Sudanese press about news that Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi announced that Egypt was prepared to cede the disputed enclave of Halayeb. Sudanese papers played down the impact and highlighted instead economic cooperation between Egypt and Sudan. Some pundits were preoccupied with the ideological similarities between contemporary post-25 January Revolution Egypt and the Islamist government and opposition in Sudan. The debate spilled over into the wider Arab print media. “In modern Egyptian history, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamists by extension, come across like an invisible entity, or at best, a mysterious one. They can be seen through the lenses of three eras, although it is difficult to match or attribute any one of them to a specific political meaning,” noted Hazem Saghieh in the London-based pan-Arab Al-Hayat. At times, the Islamists focussed on preaching and sermonising, which is particularly true of the early years that followed Imam Hassan Al-Banna's founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in Ismailia in 1928. And at other times, you see them focussing on terrorism and paramilitary activity. This is particularly true of the establishment of the terrorist organisation called the ‘Secret apparatus', which branched off from the Muslim Brotherhood in 1940, and then with the wave of political assassinations that targeted, among others, two prime ministers, namely Mahmoud Fahmi Al-Nuqrashi and Ahmed Maher, before the response came with the assassination of Al-Banna himself, in 1949,” Saghieh extrapolated. “In this way, the January Revolution broke that huge paradox in modern Egyptian history and to some extent, in the Arab one. This has meant that many outstanding issues could now be raised about tangible entities, rather than ghosts and bodies, such as: will the Islamists abide by the political game?”. The implication is that Sudan has been run by Islamists for a quarter of a century and it is still unclear if the country's Islamists will eventually adopt wholeheartedly the rules of multi-party democracy. The weeks ahead may be the litmus test.
