Weekly Press Columns Digest
03 March, 2019
KHARTOUM (Sudanow) - In his column of Monday on Al-Sudani daily newspaper, Mohamed Mohamed Khair described the post of prime minister during the Ingaz regime as an incinerator and as Medusa female monster of the Greek mythology that turns to stone anybody who looks in her eyes.
A few years ago, the post was entrusted to quasi-dumb and light-evading First Vice President Bakri Hassan Salih who was subjected to Medusa gaze after naming General Rikaby as his Finance Minister during whose era the prices rocketed to the sky and the usually silent man turned up to announce in the parliament that his government was unable to pay for an oil shipment moving around in the sea for terminating the queues in the gas stations.
His successor Mutaz Mussa was apparently a victim of Medusa gaze that also turned him to a stone when he attempted to check the rise in the dollar and to reinstate the pride of the national currency, the columnist said.
He added that Mussa concluded, for the purpose, an ethical deal with the black-market traffickers who, due to their malicious instinct, walked back on the deal and sent the dollar into a state of continuous spiraling and the market hawks turned Mussa to a twitter.
It is now the turn for Mohamed Tahir Eila to face Medusa eyes and send him to the incinerator while the dollar is on the rise, the black-market gangsters are getting ready for a new battle, the political crisis is tightening and the tension is the pattern of life in the Sudan, Khair said.
---------------
The chief editor of Almeghar Alsyasy daily newspaper, Salah Habib, says he is at a loss and does not know whom he believes, President Omar al-Beshir or a group of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP), with Beshir announcing in his Friday's speech that is quitting the NCP chairmanship and that he is the president of all Sudanese people, while the NCP officials saying he is still their leader.
Neither President Beshir has denied the repeated statements by the NCP officials nor did the latter offered a proof that Beshir has quitted the Party which nominated him to power in the first place or that he is still donned the NCP costume, said Habib in his regular column of Tuesday.
(The appointment of a governor of a state who is ex-officio the NCP chairman in that state, as Prime Minister, a minister of defense, a sovereign portfolio assumed only by an NCP official, as First Vice President and naming 14 out of 18 senior army or security officers reportedly NCP members as state governors may provide evidence that the NCP is behind those appointments. Add to this the appointment by the NCP Leadership Bureau of Ahmed Haroun NCP Deputy Chairman, replacing Faisal Hassan Ibrahim!!! – Observers).
However, the columnist said the leadership is not the issue but the urgent one is that the ship is sinking and to save the people from drowning, the NCP officials have to help Beshir, whether or not he is still leading the NCP, defuse the current crises and then consider his status in the NCP.
---------
Journalist writer Khalid Abushaibah, in a column that was published by Almustagilla daily of Sunday, held a comparison between merchants of the good old days and what he called the Ingaz ones, describing the former of honesty and gallantry and the latter of greediness and usury.
He cited a case of his grandfather who was a merchant in Abu Al-Abbas village on the eastern bank of the Blue Nile opposite Sennar city, who, according to the grandson, was honest in commercial transactions and in disbursing the zakat (Islamic tax) to deserving people each year.
Abushaibah said merchants of today utilized the market economy introduced by the Ingaz government in early 1990s demanding whatever prices they decide for their commodities, as prompted by the desire of hoarding as much profit as they can at the expense of the common people who have to secure their needs.
Merchants of today, wondering where they came from, unlike their precedents, practiced usury by imposing two prices, one in cash and the other in cheques, for the same commodity, by dealing in the foreign currency as a commodity, Abushaibah said.
He resembled some medical doctors to those greedy merchants for frequently increasing their fees to levels that cannot be afforded by the majority of the Sudanese people.
--------
The economic crisis has tightened while radical solutions have not been put in place in contrast to relative frankness by the Governor of the Central Bank of Sudan, as seen by columnist Lina Yagoub in Al-Sudani daily newspaper of Thursday.
Governor Mohamed Khair al-Zubair has dismissed as untrue reports by government officials and newspapers on delivery of deposits and credits in the public treasury, the columnist added.
Khair was reported to have told the new Prime Minister, Mohamed Tahir Eila about acute shortages in the banknotes and about the importance of making the fuels and wheat flour available.
According to Lina, the Governor also briefed the Premier on the rising rate of inflation and the decline in the rate of the Sudanese pound against the foreign currencies and on measures taken by the Bank in coordination with the Ministry of Finance for provision of the fuels and wheat in the coming period.
Bearing in mind that the plan by the Ministry of Finance for subsidizing the wheat would have ended on Thursday, the columnist predicted that the Governor was warning against occurrence of a major crisis.
As regards the banknotes shortages, she recalled a statement by senior National Congress Party (NCP) official Al-Fatih Izz al-Dinn boasting that the printing house is busy producing the banknotes.
She wondered about the fate of the printed billions of banknotes which the Bank of Sudan was reported to have been placed mainly in the ATMs where very few clients managed to withdraw not more than a thousand pounds each from their accounts.
She noted that the state of emergency law has prohibited dealing in foreign currencies outside the banks but failed to specify the amount permitted for dealing in those banks and, according to Lina, the law did not mention the manner in which the central bank would secure the foreign currencies.
The State of emergency law provided that a traveler abroad is not allowed to carry more than 3000 dollars of the equivalent but the columnist noted that the patients were not exempted from this embargo.
E N D
MAS/AS
Post your comments
Photo of the Week
Everybody alive today came from one African country (The Independent) Ariana Baio Khartoum, Jan.1 (Sudanow)-It is well known that all humans alive today can be traced back to a common ancestor but a study may have found where that ancestor originates. Researchers at the University of Oxford’s Big Data Institute mapped the entirety of genetic relationships among humans t...
More-
01 January, 2023
Phone battery killed nine persons, injured twelve
Zalingei, Jan.1 (Sudanow) - A dispute over a phone battery, in Marin Market, Central Darfur, led to the killing of nine persons and injuring of another twelve. The Director of Central Darfur Police, Salah Omar Al-Tayeb told SUNA last Thursday that main reasons behind the events in Zalingei began with a dispute over a phone battery, where one of the citizens stabbed to death. The police official added that the police forces moved to th...
Contact Us
Address: Sudan News Agency (SUNA) Building, Jamhoria Street, Khartoum - Sudan
Mobile:+249 909220011 / +249 912307547