Sudanese prime minister resigns

(Khartoum) Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok, civilian face of the transition in Sudan, resigned Sunday after another murderous day in the country where the generals are now alone in command.

As the rumor kept swelling and the local press ensured that he hadn’t shown up at his office for days, Mr. Hamdok threw in the towel on Sunday evening, explaining at length on state television having everything. attempted, but ultimately failed in a country whose “survival” is “threatened” according to him today.

The various political forces of the country, which emerged in 2019 from 30 years of the military-Islamist dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir, are too “fragmented”, he said, and the civil and military camps too irreconcilable for a “consensus Comes “to end the bloodshed” and give the Sudanese the flagship slogan of the anti-Bashir revolution of 2019: “freedom, peace and justice”.

This former UN economist who had obtained the cancellation of Sudan’s debt and his exit from the global ban has not known a moment of respite since the coup d’état of October 25.

That day, his main partner, the army chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, had him placed under house arrest in the early hours of the morning. And with him, almost all the civilians of the transitional authorities, brutally breaking the baroque team of 2019.

So popular pressure forced the army to dismiss one of its own, Omar al-Bashir. Generals and civilians agreed on a transition timetable that called for handing over all power to civilians before free elections in 2023.

But on October 25, General Burhane reshuffled the cards: he extended his de facto mandate at the head of the country for two years and reinstalled Mr. Hamdok a month later, while having previously replaced a good number of officials – notably in the within the Sovereignty Council that it oversees – by extracting the most active supporters of civil power.

Khartoum cut off from the world

Immediately, Mr. Hamdok became the enemy of the streets, the “traitor” who helped the soldiers “to facilitate the return of the old regime”.

The demonstrators, who since October 25 have been scolding General Burhane in the street, have started to scold him too.

Because in a country almost always under the rule of the army since its independence 65 years ago, the demonstrators proclaim it: they want “neither partnership, nor negotiation” with the army.

And they repeat it more and more often at the risk of their lives: on Sunday, again, among the thousands of Sudanese who took to the streets, three were killed by bullets or beatings by the security forces, reports a union of pro-democracy doctors.

In all, since October 25, 57 protesters have been killed and hundreds injured.

In a ballet now running, the authorities first tried again on Sunday, in vain, to nip the mobilization in the bud by erecting physical and virtual barriers.

Khartoum has been cut off from its suburbs for several days by containers placed across bridges over the Nile.

On the main axes, the security forces perched on armored vehicles armed with heavy machine guns watch the passers-by.

The internet and cell phone communications ceased to function in the morning and were not restored until the evening.

“The soldiers at the barracks”

Throughout the afternoon, the supporters of civil power chanted by the thousands “The soldiers in the barracks” and “The power to the people”, while young people on motorcycles crisscrossed the crowd, evacuating the wounded, because in each mobilization the ambulances are blocked by the security forces.

Activists call for making 2022 “the year of continued resistance”, demanding justice for the dozens of demonstrators killed since the putsch, but also for the more than 250 civilians killed during the “revolution” of 2019.

Opposite, an adviser to General Burhane ruled on Friday that “the demonstrations are only a waste of energy and time” which will not lead to “any political solution”.

In addition to the deaths and the shutdown of the telephone and the Internet, the security forces are also accused of having resorted in December to a new tool of repression: the rape of at least 13 demonstrators, according to the UN.

In addition, every day and in each neighborhood, the Resistance Committees, small groups that organize demonstrations, announce new arrests or disappearances in their ranks.

Europeans have already expressed their outrage, as have US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the United Nations. All plead for a return to dialogue as a prerequisite for the resumption of international aid cut after the putsch in this country, one of the poorest in the world.

Blinken warned on Saturday that the United States was “ready to respond to all those who seek to prevent the Sudanese from continuing their quest for a civilian and democratic government.”