Weekly Press Columns Digest
17 March, 2019
KHARTOUM (Sudanow) - Columnist Al-Tahir Satti has called for formation of a fact-finding committee to detect how a Philippine company has won a bid for operation of the southern harbor of Port Sudan after its tender was discarded during a stage of examination of the tenders.
Writing in his column that was published by Al-Sudani daily newspaper of Sunday, Satti cited the former director of the Sea Ports Authority, Major-General (Police) Abdul Hafiz Salih, who was dismissed for refusal to sign the contract with the Philippine company, as saying that they have ruled out that company during the first stage of considering the tenders for technical reasons.
He said the contract included a provision preventing the Sudanese government from building any port on the Red Sea throughout the 20 years of the contract.
Satti said the government must either abrogate the contract or subject it to major amendments in favor of the Sudan.
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The imposition of the state of emergency was met with discontent by the majority of the Sudanese people who regard it as a means for oppression and restriction of the freedoms.
This remark was made by Amal Ahmed Tabidy in a column that appeared in Al-Akhbar daily newspaper of Monday with the columnist refuting statements by government officials that the law was imposed for fighting corruption.
She said the corruption could be fought only by enforcing decisive laws that must be imposed without exception and by reactivating the law of investigating suspected fortunes.
The corruption cannot be curbed by the state of emergency but by just application of the laws from which no body is excluded, besides dropping the settlement law that pardons a corrupt from punishment after paying back the funds he has obtained illegally, the columnist said.
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Renowned columnist Adil al-Baz has diagnosed the case of the Sudanese government as suffering schizophrenia which he said if not cured in time would develop into madness.
He said in his regular column that appeared in Alyoum Altaly daily newspaper of Tuesday that this disease is obvious in the government's policy of declaring something and doing the opposite.
The government has declared launching a new track of national dialogue while at the same time it has imposed a state of emergency which the authorities said would not target demonstrators and the freedom of demonstration but would fight corruption, Baz said.
He added that the parliament on Monday passed the state of emergency bill, though it reduced its duration from 12 to six months while it could have confined it only to the economic field.
Instead, the government set up emergency tribunals which have so far sentenced a number of peaceful demonstrators, including women, to prison, flogging and fines, said Baz, wondering how can people sit down for dialogue while the government words are contrary to its deeds and while the sword of punishment is looming.
Citing another example of contradiction, the government, immediately after declaring freedom of the press and freeing a number of detained journalists, the authorities have apprehended senior journalist Osman Mirghani, the chief editor of Altayyar daily newspapers.
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A columnist writing in Alintibaha daily newspaper of Wednesday has described as unjustifiable and illogical the soaring prices of the basic commodities which increase each day and differ from one grocery to a neighboring one.
Dr. Hassan al-Tigany has attributed the skyrocketing prices to greediness of the merchants who sell goods at several-fold the prices they have recently bought for hoarding profits in a very short period of time at the expense of the consumer.
The second reason for the continued rise in the prices, according to Dr. Tigany, is the absence of the authorities from the markets to control and fix those prices.
The columnist blamed the government authorities for failure to control the markets and protect the people from the greedy merchants.
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Almeghar Alsyasy daily newspaper board Director (Proprietor) Al-Hindi Izz Al-Dinn in his daily columns of Thursday both criticized as disappointing the formation of the new government that was announced by Prime Minister Mohamed Tahir Eila on Wednesday.
Citing a Sudanese proverb, Hindi likened the shakeup as a mountain giving birth to a rat, noting that the government was formed in a hurry and that the press was notified only half an hour before the press conference for announcing the new government.
He said he did not expect the leadership of the state would hurriedly announce its promised "government of qualifications" before consulting the opposition parties, particularly the former prime minister Sadek al-Mahdi's National Ummah Party (NUP) at least to urge them to nominate qualified persons for the portfolios even if they refused to participate in the shake-up.
"How can the leadership hurriedly announce a government of the same faces with limited changes, retaining the skeleton as it was," Hindi said.
He added that the leadership could have urged proficient Sudanese officials with international organizations to join in the new government to help defuse the current political and economic crises. "Frankly speaking, "it is a depressing and disappointing shakeup," said Hindi who is identified as an ardent pro-government Islamist.
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Like his two predecessors, Prime Minister Mohamed Tahir Eila pledged in his first ever press conference that his government of qualifications would issue resolutions for dissolving inactive government companies and institutions and for accountability and punishment of the corrupts.
The pledges by former Prime Minister Bakre Hassan Salih and Mutaz Mussa went unfulfilled and the corruption commission act remained on paper as the commission itself has never been formed while the shortcomings of the law for fighting ill-gotten wealth have not been addressed, Alintibaha Chief Editor Al-Nour Ahmed Al-Nour said in his regular column of Saturday.
He noted that the state of emergency law was originally meant to combat corruption but, according to Nour, the set-up state of emergency tribunals have not until now looked into cases of corruption but, instead, they concentrated on trials of the protestors taking part in the nation-wide upheaval.
This was not due to the lack of corruption to the lack of the political will-power and transparency, Nour said.
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