Navigating a bump in the road: will Sudan's elections derail national dialogue?
The biggest threat to national dialogue in Sudan is the April election, which is taking place against the wishes of the opposition and the international community.
Since the eruption of civil war in South Sudan on 15 December 2013, the world’s attention has mostly been focused there – rather than on Sudan. That neglect has no doubt suited the government in Khartoum more than its opponents in the capital and in peripheral parts of the country, including Darfur, the east and the ‘Two Areas’ of the new south; the restive provinces of Blue Nile and South Kordofan.
The secession of South Sudan in 2011, after a very long and bloody war, by no means ended Khartoum’s problems as it had hoped. Fighting continues in the Two Areas and in Darfur. And the friction between President Omar al-Bashir’s ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and its opponents in Khartoum and other cities has grown more violent.
So the dogged work of Thabo Mbeki, head of the African Union’s High-Level Implementation Panel (AUHIP) on Sudan, remains far from done. He and Haile Menkerios, the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Sudan and South Sudan, are the official representatives of the international community that is trying to mediate a resolution of the continuing conflicts in Sudan.
The election will be fought on a playing field heavily tilted towards the incumbent |
Many other outsiders have also been trying to contribute, however, including immediate African neighbours, some Arab states, China – which has considerable oil interests at stake – the Troika (United States, United Kingdom and Norway), and more recently Germany, which seems to have stepped in partly because the United States (US), by refusing to lift sanctions after Khartoum allowed South Sudan to secede, has lost influence with the NCP.
Mbeki and Menkerios do seem to have helped to convince Bashir, at least in theory, that the series of separate peace processes that he has been conducting with his various enemies should be converged into one.
When Mbeki’s panel completed its report on Darfur back in 2009, it noted that the problem there was one shared by all of Sudan’s disaffected ‘peripheries’. These all feel marginalised from the economic and political centre of the country – as do even those Sudanese who are geographically at the centre, but whose interests are ignored by the small ruling elite of the NCP. And so all their grievances ought to be addressed in a single process.
Mbeki and Menkerios evidently told Bashir that he had lost South Sudan because he had failed to make a unified Sudan attractive enough. He should not make the same mistake in dealing with the remaining peripheries. Bashir agreed and so announced in January 2014 a national dialogue, which civil society and the opposition had long called for.
On 6 April 2014, the government convened a roundtable on the proposed national dialogue, which was attended by 83 political figures and representatives of 90 parties. It looked inclusive but, as the International Crisis Group (ICG) said in a recent report, ‘many of the parties were known to be government leaning.’ The roundtable produced a National Dialogue Committee (NDC) and a concession by the government to allow political rallies, though only with official permission.
 If the NCP were simply swept from power, this would leave a vacuum filled by chaos |
Yet despite these and other pro-forma moves towards national dialogue in the months ahead, the ruling NCP has narrowed rather than widen political freedom, lending credence to those who doubt its real commitment to the process. It has cracked down on the media and on opposition activists, arresting prominent leaders.
Evidently pursuing a divide-and-rule strategy against an opposition that is already highly fragmented – not least between secularists and Islamists – Bashir has been especially careful to stifle any attempts at coalition building, including through the Paris and Sudan Call Declarations of August and December 2014 respectively.
These brought together the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF) coalition – combining rebel forces in Darfur and the Two Areas – and the main internal opposition and civil society behind broad common objectives. Against that unpromising backdrop, the biggest challenge now to national dialogue is the national election that the government is conducting from 13 to 15 April; against the wishes of the opposition, the mediators and the wider international community.
Despite earlier promises, Bashir will be the NPC’s presidential candidate and the election will be fought, as in the past, on a playing field heavily tilted towards the incumbent. The NCP is claiming that 23 political parties will contest the polls, but most are believed to be NCP fronts. Credible parties are boycotting the process.
Though under no illusion that the elections are anything but a sham, Mbeki and Menkerios are trying to make the best of it. Preventing the elections from derailing the national dialogue is evidently the objective of a ‘pre-dialogue’ meeting which the government, opposition and civil society have agreed to hold on Sunday and Monday in Addis Ababa, under the auspices of the AUHIP.
| Real and immediate political change in Sudan can’t happen with the current government |
Announcing the meeting, the members of the international Troika on Sudan – the US, United Kingdom and Norway, said that ‘a genuine dialogue … remains the political process through which to negotiate – and ensure – a credible and broadly participatory national election…’
However sources close to the mediation say that this meeting should not be regarded as an attempt to make next month’s election ‘credible and broadly participatory.’ It is too late in the day for that. Rather the aim should be to convince the opposition to regard the election as just an inconvenient bump in the road to national consensus via the national dialogue, and to detour around the election and move on.
That would require, in turn, convincing Bashir to agree that this election should not preclude the possibility of another one – which would indeed be credible and broadly participatory – if and when agreement is reached for that in the national dialogue.
Many observers remain sceptical. One seasoned Addis Ababa-based analyst believes the failure of the national dialogue is inevitable and that next month’s elections will just confirm Bashir in his determination that the NCP alone should continue to control Sudan’s destiny.
The analyst says: ‘Sustained international pressure, the dire humanitarian situation in Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile, repeated social protests (mainly due to rising unemployment, the unbearable increase in the cost of living and the government’s corruption), visible divisions within the ruling NCP, the difficulty in attracting foreign investment (linked to US sanctions) – all contributed to the government of Sudan agreeing to the National Dialogue.
‘Using the tactic of divide-and-rule, Sudan’s government wanted just to silence the opposition. Winning the elections would give it some lawfulness… (I did not want to use the word “legitimacy” because it has lost it a long time ago and may never recover it).’
The ICG report suggests that the most Bashir might concede would be greater regional administrative autonomy in Darfur and the Two Areas, but in exchange for the NCP continuing to dominate the centre. What do the mediators want? It would seem that their greatest fear is that if the NCP were simply swept from power, this would leave a power vacuum that would be filled by chaos, as in Iraq and Libya when Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were deposed.
‘A reformed and reforming NCP would be the best transition into a democratic future. This is the thinking behind the mediation,’ says one person close to the process. Whether that Zimbabwe-type solution would be acceptable to the opposition is a very big question.
It would certainly not satisfy the seasoned analyst based in Addis Ababa, who says: ‘There needs to be real and immediate political change in Sudan and this can’t be done with the current government, which is practically in survival mode; is seriously challenged by the SRF; and is, to a large extent, protected by Arab governments which have a lot of influence in Sudan.’ Yet, he concedes, ‘How this kind of change will come about is a great question mark.’
Peter Fabricius, Foreign Editor, Independent Newspapers, South Africa
