Weekly Press Columns Digest
10 April, 2022
KHARTOUM (Sudanow) - Hereunder are summations of three press editorials and commentaries tackling three of the week’s outstanding developments.
The first article has dealt with the week’s highly sensational event when a female journalist threw her shoe at an outspoken counterrevolutionary politician during a press conference he was planned to address.
The second article has pinpointed the implications of the massive popular marches staged to commemorate the 6 April revolution that toppled dictator Numeiri in 1985 and the 6 April 2019 massive marches in which the furious Sudanese sat in for several days around the Army headquarters, eventually forcing the Army to oust dictator Bashir.
The third article has tackled what the writer considered the great panic that gripped the authorities before and during the 6 April occasion, a panic which was represented in the exaggerated tight security precautions taken on that day.
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Journalist Safa’a Alfahal, apparently infuriated by the behavior of politician Altoam Hajo towards the Sudanese revolution, the heavy dust of hatred he used to blow at the protesters and his call upon the military to take over power from the civilian government, which they eventually did, had decided to punish the man her own way.
During a press conference held by military coup backers, Ms. Safa moved to the podium when journalists were allowed to ask questions. She said she did not have a question, but was having a message ”from the People of Sudan to Mr. Hajo”.
Then she undressed her shoe and hurled it to the man. A fellow politician sitting on the platform beside Mr. Hajo intercepted the shoe, preventing it from reaching the targeted destination.
The incident was received with tremendous public applause and from the press.
But in this article, Journalist, Ms. Rasha Awad, is warning that this phenomenon is not democratic and can become a norm in future days. She wrote in the electronic publication Altaghyeer (Change):
There are acts that we applaud under the pressure of a certain disappointment or a fury at somebody, an organization or an authority like the wave of pleasure that swept the media after Mrs. Safa Alfahal hurled her shoe at Altoam Hajo, the leading figure in the so-called “Freedom and Change-the National Concord” group that backs the military coup.
This is a highly dangerous matter in public work, because it can encourage the tactics of unfair play, as long as it is appreciated by the public opinion and as long as it paves the way for fame and heroism for its doer.
Mr. Altoam Hajo is one of the weeds afloat on the surface of the Sudanese political crisis, a very marginal personality in the line of events.
He now suffers from negligence even from the military coup perpetrators with whom he lined up.
Assaulting him does not entail any danger upon the assailant. He is not General Burhan nor his deputy Dagalo. He is not the U.S President George Bush (Junior) who received a shoe-shot at a press conference in 2008 from the Iraqi journalist Muntasir Alzubairi.
Every person who sang praise for the shoe directed towards Altoam Hajo is paving the way for a flood of shoes to be hurled at the faces of many others in the future, may be this certain person himself.
It is in the interest of peaceful co-existence among Sudanese and the correction of the political environment in a country overloaded with struggles, differences and the ferocity of competition, to firmly and strictly establish the controls of democratic conduct and perpetuate the commitment to the rules of fair play.
The most genuine test for the deep-rootedness of democratic values is how to treat our rivals, our foes and those who differ with us..
The Sudanese revolution will continue to be all right as long as it keeps its moral excellence and its peacefulness.
Any incident that subtracts from this distinction should be treated as a passing mistake the responsibility of which rests on the person who made it.
When angry youths attacked a rally by the Forces For Freedom and Change (FFC) in Khartoum North with canisters of tear gas, some have extensively portrayed this conduct as a demonstration of “revolutionary purity,” or considered it as a sweeping defeat for the safe landing elements (The FFC!).
But, happily, the enlightened youths challenged this tendency by the need to perpetuate the rules of fair play.
This is what is morally correct and practically feasible because it is not in the interest of the peaceful demonstrators to allow the logic of violence and demonization to prevail, because this is a quality specific to the counterrevolution.
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Writer, Mr. Wa’il Majoub, was highly impressed by the massive processions staged around Sudan on 6 April to celebrate the anniversary of 6 April 1985 that saw the ouster of former dictator Ja’afar Numeiri and the beginning of the sit–in around the Army General Command on 6 April 2019 that consequently saw the downfall of dictator Omar Albashir.
Wrote Mr. Mahjoub in the electronic publication Madameek (brick layers):
What happened today has demonstrated the value, power and resolve of the protesters, the profoundness of the revolution and the wideness of its popular base.
The glimpses of victory have showed themselves from every direction.
This day of ours is a watershed in our revolutionary path, capable of fortifying our collective uprising.
All of us should now shoulder our patriotic responsibility in what could open the door for a sweeping victory that could silence the enemies’ guns and defeat them once and for all.
These millions who rose up today are a representation of the conscience and soul of our vigilant, revolutionary people.
These millions do stand for a revolutionary willpower history had never seen it defeated by anybody, any day.
This uprising should be coupled with collective social and political action commensurate with what is happening.
The resistance committees should today, before tomorrow, complete their dialogue about the revolutionary charter of the people’s authority and the charter for the establishment of the people’s authority, reaching for a unified charter that represents the resistance committees countrywide and which constitutes a basis for a wide dialogue with all the political forces that resist the military coup and endeavor to topple it and completely end the era of the salvation government of Omar Albashir.
This dialogue should also include all the labor and professional forces and organizations, even including the armed struggle forces opposed to the military coup.
The formulation of a new political order should be a priority. To reach that we should set the first precondition represented in the three Nos: No negotiations with the coup perpetrators, No partnership with them and No legitimacy for them. This should be done without any maneuvers or discussions and in a way that ends the role of the military in politics.
An open dialogue should start now among the political forces, a dialogue which can remedy all the errors that took place sine 11 April 2019 down to 25 October 2021, the date of the military coup.
There is no room for a political front based on alliances and entities and which is fabricated for the sole purpose of power sharing like what happened in the Freedom and Change alliance.
It should be the responsibility of each single party, on its own and in which each party signs, by itself, in order for things to be clear and the calculations come genuine and truly representative.
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The noteworthy security precautions taken by the authorities on the eve of the 6 April mass processions have drawn a slanderous commentary from sarcastic journalist Mr. Haydar Almikashfi who wrote in the daily journal Aljareeda (the newspaper):
The announcement by the Resistance Committees that they were staging countrywide massive “earthshaking” demonstrations on the august anniversaries of 6 April had caused a high rise in the level of adrenalin in the bodies of the military coup perpetrators.
They lost their nerves with anxiety and restlessness rising in them to their highest.
They gave it a thought and weighed the matter, looking sternly around them, went forward and backward and then decided to entrench to protect their coup from the coming earthquakes.
So they suddenly declared the sixth of April an official holiday nationwide.
The secretariat of the council of ministers that decided the holiday did not tell us what for and on what occasion was this surprise holiday. They could not say the holiday was in celebration of the anniversary of sit-in around Army Headquarters of course!
They also could not say it is a celebration of the December Revolution victory. So they “bluntly” declared it as an “official holiday.” And that is all.!
But what is clear is that this holiday was within the details of the plan for “entrenchment”.
So, in addition to the holiday, they hastened to shut all the bridges connecting the three-cities Capital, leaving only the two remote Halfaya and Soaba bridges open for traffic. It is (a move in the form of a rose) as the Sudanese sarcastic adage says.
These two bridges are far away from the Capital’s entrances, a matter that makes it difficult for the citizens to use them to cross to the different quarters of greater Khartoum.
By the result Khartoum turned into a semblance of a city of ghosts, waiting for the owls to cry through its quarters. There was very little traffic in the streets (whether mounted or pedestrian).
All symptoms of urbanity were gone, while militarism became the rule of the day.
Troops were seen everywhere: along the fences of the Army General Command and eastwards up to the Burri roundabout.
The Rapid Support Forces entrenched around their headquarters in big numbers of armed vehicles.
The same could be seen around the state house (the Republican Palace) and its vicinity.
Heavy crowds of troops were deployed along the Airport Avenue and near to the airport’s main gate, at the bridges entrances (in particular the While Nile Bridge) towards the Parliament building. The same amassing of troops was made around the medical corps and the corps of engineers.
Tens of armed personnel carriers and armed trucks were everywhere as if readying for a defensive war against a fierce enemy.
This was in addition to the fact that bus terminals were purposefully emptied from transport vehicles. So the big bus terminals of Sharwani and Jackson were ghostly areas. All shops around these areas were closed.
All these military symptoms, if seen by a visitor who does not know anything about 6 April, would think the country was at war far greater than the Russia–Ukraine war.
That visitor would have been at wonder if he/she came to learn that all those troops, weaponry and the shutting of roads and a curfew were just to face peaceful processions whose organizers just sought to express themselves and do not possess anything other than their shouts and slogans.
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