This has been yet another momentous week for Sudanese political reform even as opposition forces insist that the Sudanese government is a singularly unpopular one, notes Gamal Nkrumah With most of its 40 million people struggling to make ends meet, and with political reforms blocked, the opposition forces took to the streets for the second week running. But the government's relative nimbleness on the political front confounds the critics. It was announced earlier this week that the two main coalition partners in government -- the northern-based, Islamist- oriented National Congress Party (NCP) and the southern-based, secularist Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) -- have patched up their differences on a number of key issues. The deal came as a surprise, because even as the truce was being inked in, the police and security forces were busy arresting protesters in front of the parliament building in the Sudanese capital Khartoum. The deal clinched on Sunday, ascertains the right of southerners to hold a key referendum on southern Sudanese independence. The referendum bill was considered the nastiest sticking point between the NCP and the SPLM. "We have reached agreement on three very important laws which have been grounds for serious disagreements between the two parties," Pagan Amum, who led popular multi-party demonstrations in front of the Sudanese parliament or National Assembly, told reporters in Khartoum. Apart from the national referendum, there is also the consultation exercise for people living in disputed boundary areas between northern and southern Sudan such as South Kordofan and Blue Nile. The majority of the inhabitants of these areas are suspected of wishing to join southern Sudan rather than remain as part of northern Sudan. A referendum on whether the oil-rich region of Abyei should join the south is also in the offing. Politicians belonging to both parties, the NCP and the SPLM downplay differences, ascribing recent acrimony between the two parties as the kind of sharp words exchanged between friends. Even so, the government has been frantic in its efforts to calm the squabbling Sudanese opposition factions. The most vociferous of these groups is the umbrella grouping, the Juba Declaration Parties, which include the largest and most influential political parties in northern Sudan as well as the SPLM. The government is tempted to make populist gestures in the name of Islam in the predominantly Muslim north of the country. Southern Sudanese ire at the government's ugly human rights record that can no longer be contained. What is more, the southerners are now joined by northern opposition forces such as the influential Umma Party and the Popular Congress Party headed by the onetime ideological mentor of Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir and the country's chief Islamist ideologue. Turabi, whose Popular Congress Party is among the leading Juba Declaration Parties, has been especially vehement in denouncing his former allies in the ruling NCP. Equally uproarious is the Umma Party leader and last democratically-elected prime minister of Sudan Sadig Al-Mahdi -- another leading member of the Juba Declaration Parties. Also included in this new powerful opposition umbrella grouping is the Communist Party headed by Ibrahim Nugud and the splinter faction of the Umma -- the Reform and Renewal Party headed by Mubarak Al-Mahdi. The Sudanese authorities have reacted angrily to these attempts to curtail its powers. "If people go on another procession or any other demonstration without approval or permission from the concerned authorities, it will be considered a challenge to the law and sovereignty of the country," Sudanese Interior Minister Ibrahim Mahmoud Hamid told reporters in Khartoum. The Sudanese opposition is no longer made up of tiny, often fractious belligerents, but is now a more cohesive force demanding radical change. The success of the opposition parties to unify their ranks has so irked the NCP that it has moved again to badger opposition supporters. Critics, however, complain that the leading Sudanese opposition parties display some of the flaws of the NCP. The opposition leaders strongly deny the charge, noting that they have not been slow to respond to events. Although statistics for Sudan are remarkably doddering, the National Electoral Commission disclosed that some 15.8 million Sudanese are now eligibly registered voters. It is hoped that free and fair elections can take place throughout the sprawling country -- Africa's largest. Opposition groups, however, are still extremely suspicious of the government's sincerity in instituting radical political reform. They suspect the NCP of playing for time in order to entrench its power in the country and sideline its political rivals. Such suspicions only re-enforce the severe social and political strain gripping Sudan.
