Protest in Khartoum: Why NCP Regime of Omar Bashir Must Fall Now
4 min readUnraveling the economically Besieged Omar Al Bashir`s regime of Sudan! Let the Khartoum Demonstrations rage on!!!
By Kerubino Kocrup Makuach, Nairobi, Kenya
Tuesday, December 25, 2018 (PW) — After the Independence of South Sudan on 9th July 2011, Sudan has never experienced peace and stability. For the last 8 years, Sudan has been characterized by many difficulties, economic crisis, and hyper-inflation, high level of unemployment, famine, raging wars and ethnic violence across the nation.
Most of Sudan`s regions have been engulfed by an orgy of violence and humanitarian crisis. Given an example of the ongoing resurgence of war in Southern Kordonfan, Blue Nile and Darfur regions which were the epicenter of genocide a few years back. Sudan is now teetering on the brink of collapse! It has entered in the annals of history as a failed State.
Since 1989 when Gen. Omar Al Bashir took over the government militarily, there have been coup d’état attempts but thwarted by his security apparatus. Omar has been ruling Sudan through iron -fist well- known of dictatorial regime. Sudanese have been having cataclysmic confrontations and hostility towards his government. This is because the government has been unable to provide the people with basic necessities which they enjoyed in the Old Sudan.
Before the secession of South Sudan, Arabs had a good economic life simply because the government was drilling oil from the South and used the oil revenues to develop the North and provide public services to the people. This included education, healthcare, roads, infrastructures, electricity, communication, and other basic services.
The lack of it is the cause for the demonstrations in Khartoum. The demonstrations broke out a few weeks ago, following the government’s announcement of the new budget in December 2018. This included the scrapping of basic food subsidies, which saw the exorbitant prices of bread rise by 100% overnight (from half a Sudanese pound to one pound or $0.033).
The government also devalued the currency to 31.5 pounds to the dollar in February, after raising it from 6.6 pounds to 18 pounds to the dollar in January. The official inflation rate is 34 per cent annually, but many believe the actual figure is much higher. The figures available put unemployment at around 15 per cent.
With all these problems which have been faced in the country, President Al Bashir’s government has been jumping up and down looking for remedies to Sudan’s economic woes. That is why he was shrewdly and ingeniously lobbying for South Sudan’s rebel opposition leader, Riek Machar who was under a house arrest in South Africa.
Bashir tried to convince the South African government and Inter- government Authority on Development (IGAD) to let Riek Machar release and accommodate him in Khartoum and he went also lobbying for IGAD to shift the venue of South Sudan Sudan’s peace talks to Khartoum.
He pathologically lied and deceived the regional leaders that he is the right person to reconcile the two warring leaders of South Sudan- Salva Kiir and Riek Machar. The main aim and strategy was to solve his domestic problems under the pretext of bringing peace and stability in South Sudan. Also due to numerous fails of peace talks in Addis- Ababa, Ethiopia under the auspices of regional leaders.
As a culmination of this, Sudan government has dispatched its security forces to the oil fields in South Sudan and started drilling the oil to revive or resuscitate the economic basket that is facing the people in Khartoum and let his government survive through coup attempts.
For the last two weeks, Sudan government under President Al -Bashir is using draconian measures on the protesters in Khartoum. There have been systemic killings and pogroms, door to door arrest, humiliation of opposition leaders many who have tortured them to death.
Now there is displacement of millions of Sudanese people to many neighbouring countries, Chad, Egypt, CAR and South Sudan. Unholy trinity Government of Omar is a nightmare, cancerous growth that urgently requires the surgeon’s knife. The economic crisis facing Sudan is at the best very grim, and this is compound and exacerbated by the war, which the regime is determined to escalate.
Therefore, I call upon the International community, UN, Africa Union, and IGAD to intervene in the Sudan and the government to stop arbitrarily arrest of opposition leaders and silent pogroms which have been carried out by Omar Al Bashir government on Sudanese people in Khartoum.
It is very shameful and absurd for the world to keep silent on this looming orgy of killings and humanitarian crisis. Omar’s government must go!
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