Weekly Press Columns Digest
01 March, 2020
KHARTOUM (Sudanow)—In a column that was published by Altayyar daily newspaper of Sunday, Asma'a Juma'ah has criticized a speech by the Sovereignty Council (SC) President inaugurating a mosque as well as the very building of that mosque reportedly by the SC Vice President.
Commenting on statements by President Abdul Fattah al-Burhan that they would not relinquish the Islamic faith and calling upon preachers and mosque imams for revival of mosques and dissemination of the faith, Asma'a said this reminded her of exploitation by the toppled regime of Islamic slogans for continuing in power, wondering how this can be achieved under conditions of insecurity and hunger.
She also wondered about building a mosque in Khartoum's Jabrah neighborhood where there are many mosques, suggesting that Vice President Mohamed Hamdan Daglo could have built, instead, a school or any other social institution.
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Defining the losers from the downfall of the extinct and corrupt regime, columnist Mohamed Rajy does not believe they are the Islamists who participated in the pro-Islamic coup detat and who, according to Rajy, put down their arms and withdrew their support to the Ingas regime years ago.
Writing on Al-Tahrir online newspaper that appeared on Monday, Rajy said those who missed Beshir's regime are the faith-mongers, the corrupts, the polygamists, the hypocrites, the opportunists and those who used to give fatwa (false Islamic opinions) that tolerates bribery, usury, annihilation of one-third for keeping the two-thirds of the people, etc.
Those losers use as weapons false news and rumors they spread against the new revolutionary regime and they are found in all walks of life operating as traffickers in currency, flour and cement, bakery owners, journalists, Radio-TV announcers, army, police officers, etc., the columnist said.
He added that the Holy Koran has sternly cursed people who spread rumors and Mohammad the Prophet has ordered their deportation and fighting them because they are the real foes.
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Columnist Al-Tahir Satti says in a column carried by Al-Saiha daily newspaper of Tuesday that he has missed the annual report by the Auditor-General that was usually issued in October each year but Satti says that the report on the financial performance of the government institutions for 2019 did not appear last October.
Satti said the report, which would have been the last and final one of the obsolete regime, is not needed for accountability but for documentation and comparison with the financial performance in the years.
He noted that the incumbent Auditor-General was apparently missed to be kicked off by the government of the December Revolution as he was appointed to the office by ousted President Omar al-Beshir and approved by the then parliament in 2010 for a term of five years that would have expired in 2015 but he has remained in the office until now.
The columnist suggested to the Sovereignty Council and the Council of Ministers to consider his case "either to leave the office according to the law or to remain in the post until a further revolution."
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Outstanding journalist-columnist Mahjoub Mohamed Salih says he was astonished with a second postponement till next June of a meeting of donors (Friends of Sudan) that was earlier delayed from December to April this year for an unknown reason.
What was reported that the State of Kuwait has apologized for hosting the meeting is not a convincing justification for the postponement as there is ample time for finding another venue, wrote Salih in a column that was published by Al-Sudani Aldauliyyah on Wednesday.
He feared that the reason was that the Sudan has no ready projects for the donors to carry out, adding that he had repeatedly cautioned that the expected meeting should be one for taking decisions of allocating specific projects to specific donors, rather than exchanging opinions that ends up with pledges which the donors might revoke.
Salih cited bountiful pledges made by donors in 2005 for financing projects in North and South Sudan during the transitional period that followed the Comprehensive Peace agreement (CPA), recalling that the donors walked back on those pledges on grounds that they had spent the pledged money on the war in Darfur.
The senior journalist, meanwhile, has criticized as passive the stance by the Ministry of Finance towards the country's economic deterioration with the Sudanese currency plummeting and the inflation climbing up every day as if the Ministry is punishing the people by leaving them to be crushed by the brutal market for opposing its suggestion for lifting subsidies.
He proposed that the Prime Minister improvise from previous academic discussions and from experiences by other nations a win-win policy that is satisfactory to both sides.
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Dr. Haider Ibrahim, in a column that appeared on Al-Tahrir online newspaper of Thursday, has criticized a policy adopted by the British Consulate in Khartoum for issuing entry visa to Sudanese planning to visit Britain, labeling that policy as "almost neo-racism".
At the outset of his column, Dr. Ibrahim noted that Britain is presumed to be an advocate of human rights and democracy but appears not to respect the human right of movement, travel and tourism, giving preponderance to its sovereign right.
Citing a personal experience, the columnist indicated that his criticism was not prompted by that experience but by the right to the freedom of movement and by the long queues of Sudanese applicants for entry visa and many of them are turned down for unconvincing reasons.
The Consular authorities base their rejection on a meaningless reason that the visa applicant may not return to his homeland or to his place of residence, said Ibrahim, adding that the guarantee could be a binding legal undertaking that permits Britain to deport a visitor immediately and to prevent him from applying for asylum, for instance.
This behavior by the British Consulate towards the Sudanese could raise a number of suspicions, including an undeclared hostile policy against the Sudan or the existence of "pockets of the Muslim Brotherhood deep state within the British diplomatic system that attempt to tarnish the image of Britain among the Sudanese because the behavior of the Consulate reflects a high degree of disrespect to the Sudanese people," said Dr. Ibrahim.
"The Sudan is no longer a terrorist state and the government of the revolution has underlined the dignity of the Sudanese and the need to treat him as a respected, democratic person," the columnist stressed, adding: "The Sudanese who applied for visiting Britain are mostly academics, specialists and businessmen who cannot be feared and Britain has to give the Sudanese person due consideration and treat him with respect and objectivity."
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Columnist Zuhair al-Sarraj has branded as ignorant the Islamists and symbols of the obsolete regime for depreciating on social media and other newspaper a recent visit to Sudan by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeieir and the welcome he was granted in the Sudan, on grounds that the latter has no executive powers which rest with the Chancellor.
In addition to his status as head of a sovereign state, a position that must be respected rather than ridiculed, President Steinmeieir is playing a major role in his country's foreign policy and external relations, Sarraj wrote in a column that was published by Aljareedah daily newspaper of Saturday.
Belittling the character of the German President and his visit to Sudan only show ignorance by the Islamists that he was a key political actor in Germany and Europe in the last 20 years and a deputy to Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2007-9 besides assuming such high-level positions as chairman of the parliamentary Social Democratic Party Caucus and head of the office of a previous chancellor, wrote Sarraj.
He added that President Steinmeieir enjoys an overwhelming popularity among the German people and the German political elite and is regarded by the majority of the Germans as the one who has drawn up the German foreign diplomacy and policy during the past two decades.
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