Weekly Press Columns Digest

Weekly Press Columns Digest

KHARTOUM (Sudanow) - The resignation last week of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok has triggered a lot of commentaries from writers and journalists. Follows is a translation of three articles tackling the resignation with  respect to the lessons which can be learned from that resignation, the assertions by the revolution enemies that the country’s existence would be at stake if the nation would not accept the status quo as well as notions about foreign intervention in the country’s affairs.

On the resignation of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok columnist Haydar Almikashfi wrote a commentary in the daily journal Aljareeda (the newspaper), considering Hamdok’s step as giving a lesson of good conduct that should be learned by politicians:

Dr. Abdalla Hamdok has resigned and gone his own way, relieving his critics and relieving himself.

He has resigned after doing what he could to take the country out of the grave political crisis created by General Burhan’s military coup.

Even if Hamdok had made a miscalculation, he deserves thanks for trying a solution.

After Dr. Hamdok’s departure the playground has crystallized into just two roadways: The roadway of the revolutionaries and all those who reject the coup and the roadway of the coup supporters,  lead by General Burhan and those who entrench with him behind barricades and gunnery. The area in-between in which Hamdok had used to stand on is now gone.

And if Hamdok had failed to honor his duty of unifying the politicians, due to the great intransigence and wickedness he faced from the coup perpetrators, their malice and their failure
to honor their agreements with him, he has to be credited for his patience and resolve to do something.

Under these circumstances the man had no choice other than to relieve himself from this heavy responsibility and return it to the people. Here he deserves from us to say to him: Many thanks..noble man.

After Hamdok’s resignation there emerges the legitimate question: By God’s right, what keeps the coup leader and his group in their official positions after the people, the rightful owners of all sovereignty and power in this country, had rejected them?

Nothing remains for this lot other than to take advice from the telling lesson given by Hamdok when he resigned.

Their best choice now is obey the will of the people and do the same: resign and go back to the barracks to build a strong, unified,  national army in place of these varied armies and militias that threaten the national security in a way no less than what could be done by an invading foreign army .

But, unfortunately, what we see from these people is a determination to stay in power, even if this would lead them to kill a third of the people of this country as their religious advisors in the days of Omar Albashir had advised them to do.

But tell me: How can the protégés of the ousted regime of Omar Albashir - who grew up in the custody of that regime and were nurtured to the love of power, repression, killing, mutilation and the hoarding of lawful and unlawful money- train themselves on the art of resignation, that sophisticated art which cannot be learned except by civilized, courageous nobles who readily resign when they commit even a petty error.

Those who do this killing of peaceful demonstrators do it because they were raised to the bad manners of the regime from which they came and, so, will never learn the morality of resignation.

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For his part Emeritus Professor of African History at the U.S University of Missouri, Dr. Abdalla Ali Ibrahim, is highly critical of the circulating notion that the country would slip into chaos if we do not accept the status quo (despotic rule), now that prime minister Abdall Hamdok has resigned office.

In an article in the electronic publication Sudanile, wrote  Prof. Ibrahim:   

It is a symptom of bad thought to put the resignation of PM Hamdok into two forms: A gathering of mourning over our bad luck as a result of this resignation or an opportunity to  frighten the historical forces of the revolution and change to readily accept the dictations of the counterrevolution and  succumb to the results of the military coup, or else the country would be destroyed.

That is a sort of terrorization through the frightening of the people from “a grave turn that threatens the very existence of the nation if you do not yield to the military”.

The counterrevolution is also asserting that “if we, all of us,  would not put aside our differences and come to a word of agreement that does not except anybody, the country will break up.” For them, this “word of agreement” is no more than the signing of a document of our surrender to the military.

Those who cry out of fear from the breaking up of the country had done all they could to get rid of the third of our country in order to avoid the problems of diversity. They did so in order to be free to do what they like with what remains from Sudan (the writer is referring here to the breaking away of Southern Sudan under the Bashir rule .

These are the people who daringly mobilized the Arab tribal leaders against non-Arabs. They are those who created family and tribal armies, thus breaking the Armed Forces chain of command.

The forces of the counterrevolution, who frighten us from the consequences of the present struggle, are the ones who mercilessly fought our revolution. And when they felt they have triumphed upon the revolution, they tend to show fear for the safety of a country they still believe they are its guardians.

The revolution forces pose no threat to the country as the counterrevolution wants us to believe. It is despotism that can break up the country. Here we should remember that  
this revolution had no existence  on the political stage when the South of Sudan broke away and when the areas of Kawda (in Southern Kordofan) and Jebel Marra (in Darfur) went out of government control.

It was the Salvation regime that challenged and defied everyone who called for equal citizenship. And, so, It was the people in those areas who stood up to that regime, fighting for equal citizenship.

Those who fear for this revolution ًshould remember that the revolution is still keen about its early demand for a civilian democratic Sudan, as it did in the October 1964  that ousted General Abbood. This demand is the cornerstone of any change. Nothing can unify Sudanese other than the democratic revolution. And when the tribalists went out to barricade the Khartoum-Port Sudan highway, the masses of the City of Port Sudan sided with the revolution and condemned the closure of the Highway.

And when the leaders of the former rebel groups went out to barricade the roads leading to the State House (the Republican Palace) to persuade Burhan to seize power in a military coup,   the minds and hearts of the Darfur towns of Alfashir, Nyala and Zalengi were throbbing of the love and loyalty to the revolution.

The 2019 sit-in around the Army General Command was a crossroads for the nation, a Mecca visited by pilgrims from all over Sudan.

The revolution in Sudan is the only will under which all Sudanese live in one bond as a nation.

By this definition, the revolution is what political scientists call the centripetal of Sudanese. And  what the counterrevolution is after these scientists would call centrifugal. The first brings together and the other divides and separates.  

The counterrevolution cautions us to emulate them in their fear from a cracking country.

This is no less  than a dictation of their conditions for our surrender.

In reality our country is in a state of hard labor for change, through the revolution.

Such times in history are characterized with big chaos and disturbance when the old seeks to coexist with the new with no one of them able to overwhelm the other.

Very close to this is the statement by Italian Marxist Antonio Francesco Gramsci that the old world dies while the new world (just like our revolution) struggles to be born.

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Wrote, Mr. Ezzeddin Salama in the electronic publication Alrakooba (the shack) in what he said is foreign intervention in Sudan’s domestic affairs:

Resigning Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok’s stay in power has revealed the naivety of our political forces, those active and those inactive.

More importantly, the resignation has projected the valiance and the willpower of the Sudanese youths who drew specific dreams for the post-Bashir era, dreams stolen by the officials through their chaotic administration of the public affairs.

More dangerous, the resignation has unveiled the blatant foreign and semi-direct intervention in our country on the part of the West to determine for us what to do next.

Allowing any party (east or west) to colonize our country is a betrayal of the sacrifices of our youths in the revolution.

The youths of the revolution have to be aware about this unprecedented colonial situation for which, very sadly, most, if not all, of our politicians have lay prostrate.

The fate of Sudan should be determined by Sudanese minds, a pure Sudanese willpower, otherwise the sacrifices of our youths would have no value.

It is enough to say that we own a land but we do not own a state. We possess officials, but do not own a decision. We own slogans, but do not possess concord.

No complete agreement can be attained for any future government, because complete agreement is impossible, not just in Sudan, but every where. But the only lesson the coming officials should understand is that the youths who made the revolution would not tolerate to be dropped out and should be party to any decision.

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YH/AS 

Comment

  1. Abdul azim gafar

    The resignation of sayed Hamdock is a great loss....It is a.fact that cannot be denied except by those who do not like freedom and democracy.

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