OPINION: A Stage Toward Democracy, Not Else
16 May, 2020
Tens of thousands of Sudanese took to the streets on 30 June 2019 demanding the Transitional Military Council hand over power to civilians
The stage of transition toward democracy always tends to establish the permanent rule of law based on revolutionary mandate. Now, the debate raised by Sudanese Islamists about the legality of such stage decisions remains meaningless so long as our judicial institutions themselves are inherited from a repressive regime.
In addition to the need for rebuilding these institutions with revolutionary procedures, no any judicial branch sought at the time of uprisings against Albashir to curb the change that mainly targeted the constitution of the regime in the first place.
If there is a novel need now from the old regime’s men to respect the laws of the National Congress Party (NCP), then why did people revolt and tear the country’s then-implemented constitution?
In fact, the state in which the path of the revolution that began in December 2018 has ended should not make us captive in response critically to those who argue about the illegality of the transitional authorities' procedures.
It was a must, once the revolution succeeded, that those revolutionary decisions should have brought about the kind of change we wanted. However, due to many factors the transitional government has not been able to make these important decisions concerning reform only now, where it is embarking to do law reform - since the Constitutional Charter allows composing a sub-committee to eradicate the deeply rooted Islamist state.
Revolutions are in nature taking place to achieve societal reform, and for this they make decisions that are inevitably incompatible with those corrupt Islamists who were primarily targeted. The French Revolution, which achieved bright aspirations for humanity when it destroyed France’s entire old system, made then its laws in line with the goals of the masses.
Our Sudanese revolutions that started with the Mahdia Revolt achieved at the time a new situation that undermined all the repressive structures of the state, and later established its own laws. Hence, there is no argument for the vanquished to determine the nature of the work of our revolution, which ended their political status, marked by everything repressive.
Supporters of the former regime are not in a just position to protest against any revolutionary measure to restore institutionalization in all its forms to rebuild the country in an exact manner sought by the revolutionaries.
No matter how they protested against political and judicial measures to revolutionize the civil service and the private sector, those remnants basically wanted to block the restoration of the state, not to express their views against the state’s alleged oppression.
They, on the one hand, found the entire appropriate climate after their military coup to jeopardize the foundations on which the country was founded. On the other hand, the old regime’s supporters are, according to their ideology, not democrats at all. So, it is ironic that the ruthless Islamists demand the mercy of the justice of the new free system, which they worked for the last three decades to prevent its establishment, and are desperately working out now to destroy it.
The truth is that the tolerance of the revolution that was built on peacefulness means has tolerated the leaders of the ousted regime by ruling them with the laws they drafted themselves. That was happening at a time when they should have been tried by new revolutionary laws - as they did when they seized power.
The new democracy we seek now depends on the seriousness of those in charge of the transitional period to establish strong power. Any governmental weakness towards the remnants of the old regime would be a severe blow to the fundamental goals the Sudanese people struggled for even before the time of independence.
Sudan’s new rulers should be well prepared and responsible for strengthening the democratic transition we are witnessing now. It is a stage for formulating the perpetuated rule of law, bringing corrupt people to justice and paving the way for a rational democracy that addresses the crises the ousted regime has deepened in the country.
*** Sudanow contributor Salah Shuaib is a Sudanese journalist living in the United States of America. He is a spokesperson of the Sudanese Professional Association.
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