13-December-2024

Weekly Press Columns Digest

Weekly Press Columns Digest

 

KHARTOUM (Sudanow) - Worshipers must have been astonished and doubtful with last Friday's sermon that was delivered by controversial prayers leader Abdul Hay Yusuf in his Khartoum's Jabrah neighborhood mosque criticizing, even lamenting, a recent decision by Social Welfare Minister Lina al-Sheikh sequestrating money and assets of 25 suspicious non-governmental organizations, said Beshir Arbajy in a column that appeared on Aljareedah daily newspaper of Sunday.   

However, the columnist said the astonishment vanishes when it turns out that the Islamist owns one of those organizations named Zil Norain.

This organization, according to Arbajy, used to enjoy considerable exemptions from customs and government fees that enabled it to compete against the major mining, export and import companies, while the proprietor is not known for generosity with an open door to the poor or contribution to alleviating poverty in the country.

He was also known to the public as the Sultan's scholar who sided with former President Omar al-Beshir in his last days of power and communicated to him a fatwa that he could kill one third of the people to rule over the balance, the columnist said.

He added that during Beshir's rule, Yusuf used to say that Islamic tenets prohibit speaking politics on forums of mosques and ban opposition to rulers, whereas the Islamist at present speaks politics on his mosque forum and opposes the transitional government in favor of the defunct regime.

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Prominent columnist Al-Tahir Satti, writing in his regular column in Al-Sudani daily newspaper on Monday, has called for joining the world trade organization, a move in which the previous government of the defunct regime failed to achieve.

The columnist said the failure by the ousted regime to join the organization was due to what he called chaotic economic policy of that regime and failure to meet the conditions of admission set by the international body.

Those conditions include the provision of a list of binding customs tariffs and a timetable for removing barriers to the public services, Satti said, adding that the extinct government failed to provide those requirements and, instead, the delegations used to travel to Switzerland since 1994 until the ouster of the regime, for the purpose, spending a lot of money without achieving any success, except releasing statements that a number of member nations supported the Sudan admission.

He recalled as irrelevant a response by the then minister of trade in parliament to a query that his government would not allow importation of alcohols, especially beer and whisky, upon admission to the world trade organization.

Reform of the domestic situation provides the means for joining the international trade body instead of the method by the ousted regime of squandering money in fruitless travels to the headquarters of the organization and there is no conspiracy by Israel or the United State of America, as used to be alleged by the former regime, that bars the Sudan joining the organization, said Satti.

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Writing in Alakhbar daily newspaper of Tuesday, columnist Al-Zubair Saeed has remarked that nowadays officials of the former regime, led by former foreign minister Ibrahim Ghandour, have taken to the habit of freely releasing statements that easily found their way to the different media out lets, as if they were not part of the regime that was toppled with a popular revolution.

Those statements are contradictory and discrepant and need to be scrutinized carefully, otherwise they would be a source of mental and psychological pollution, said Saeed.

He recalled that, during their ousted regime, those officials used to make such statements on relevant and irrelevant occasions but the recipients of the Sudanese people got accustomed to the extent that they just ignored and turned a deaf ear to them.

Saeed noted that Ghandour and his colleagues seem not to be recognizing the change that has removed them from the seats of power and are now releasing free statements which the columnist advised the listeners to launder carefully before consideration so as to avert mental contamination which he warned is worse than having vegetables without washing them.

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Columnist Abdul Jalil Suleiman, writing on Alyoum Altali daily newspaper of Wednesday, has acclaimed a recent resolution by the Sudanese Council of Ministers abrogating the infamous public order law that he said was humiliating to the Sudanese people, especially the women.

He said that he and many others, including moderate Islamists led by Amin Hassan Omar, opposed the law and called for casting it in the dump of history, although, he added, many influential rigid Islamists called for retaining the law not because it expresses religious and social values as they alleged, but because it provides a means for humiliating and taming the people and to make them yield to the will of the religion traffickers of the Muslim Brothers and ISIS who engaged themselves in female dresses, hair-style and shoes.

It was part of so-called community control laws which were of a politico-security nature aimed at debasing the human dignity and suppressing the personal liberties in the name of religion and chastity, said Suleiman.

The law left it to policemen to decide that a lady was dressed indecently and was flogged 40 lashes or fined or subjected to both penalties.

He cited Amin Hassan Omar as then writing about the public order law that was imposed in 1996 that it was introduced in compliance with pressures by mosque imams (prayers leaders) and fanatic youth who believed that some kinds of social conduct did not conform to the Islamic Sharia.

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Mohamed Abdul Majid listed in his regular column on Alintibaha daily newspaper of Thursday a number of failures, blunders and acts of corruption by the former regime of the alleged Islamists.

He began with an air defense method mentioned by Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Mohamed Hussein, in absence of efficient radars, relying on sheer eyesight while Israeli aircraft and missiles were striking positions inside Sudan.

Abdul Majid said the defunct regime was annihilating hundreds of thousands of people in Darfur while it was preparing for a consultative Islamic conference and holding a three-year national dialogue with 120 splinter political parties in Khartoum.

While they were hording petrodollars before the secession of South Sudan and gold riches after the secession, the officials of that regime were denying six-month payments to the Sudan TV workers and simultaneously they were raising false Islamic slogans on that TV screen as well as other sites, the columnist said.

He added that those officials changed the currency, the Sudan time, the school curricula, the bus stations and the map of the Sudan and its states and now they object to replacing the director of the curricula in the Ministry of Education.

The officials of the defunct regime were squandering trillions of pounds while the dialysis machines were out of action and the child milk was lacking, Abdul Majid said.

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The law that has been issued by the Sovereign and Ministers councils for dismantling the Ingaz regime has been awaited by the revolutionaries since the December 2018 revolution as every new regime in the world responds to the demands of the revolutionaries who paid dearly for ridding themselves from the previous oppression and injustice and for  protection of the new regime, said Mahjoub Urwah in a column carried by Altayyar daily newspaper of Saturday.  

He recalled that from the outset of seizing power in a military coup detat and for protecting itself, the Ingaz regime dissolved all political parties and the elected parliament, suspended the constitution, suppressed the freedom of expression, closed the free newspapers and opened the detentions to all opponents, even to those who offered advice for the interest of the nation.

The defunct regime imposed laws only for the purpose of protecting itself and enforced policies of empowerment by replacing experienced and qualified senior officials of the ministries and other governmental units with its inexperienced and unqualified supporters to ensure control of the ruling machine, the columnist said.

He cited as an instance of the then prevalent corruption, the Ingaz conduct of pardoning a thief from its ranks, only asking him to pay for what he robbed or even promoting him, and at the same time punishing a person who was not a follower, as if the officials of that regime did not hear a saying by Mohamed The Prophet that a nation perishes when its officials pardon a thief if he is a nobleman and punish him if he is an ordinary man.

 

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MAS/AS

Sudanow is the longest serving English speaking magazine in the Sudan. It is chartarized by its high quality professional journalism, focusing on political, social, economic, cultural and sport developments in the Sudan. Sudanow provides in depth analysis of these developments by academia, highly ...

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