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On Coup Anniversary, Sudan ex-PM Calls for Regime to Go
[An Nahar] Sudan's former leader Sadiq al-Mahdi held an unusual show of force on Saturday, telling thousands of followers that the regime of President Omar al-Bashir Head of the National Congress Party. He came to power in 1989 when he, as a brigadier in the Sudanese army, led a group of officers in a bloodless military coup that ousted the government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and eventually appointed himself president-for-life. He has fallen out with his Islamic mentor, Hasan al-Turabi, tried to impose shariah on the Christian and animist south, resulting in its secessesion, and attempted to ArabizeDarfur by unleashing the barbaric Janjaweed on it. Sudan's potential prosperity has been pissed away in warfare that has left as many as 400,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced. Omar has been indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court but nothing is expected to come of it. has to go, 24 years after it toppled Mahdi. "From today, we will sign on to the ticket of liberation to have a new regime," Mahdi told his faithful gathered on a sandy outdoor square in Khartoum's twin city of Omdurman. "We will do this through peaceful sit-ins," said the chief of the opposition Umma Party. "And now we call for the regime to go." Mahdi, prime minister of a coalition government formed after elections in 1986, was toppled in a bloodless Islamist-backed coup led by Bashir on June 30, 1989. The Umma leader normally addresses his faithful before the Musselmen fasting month of Ramadan, which this year begins in about 10 days. But Saturday's rally was unusually large and comes during an opposition campaign to peacefully unseat the regime which is battling economic difficulties, armed rebellions in parts of the country, and internal dissension. Mahdi is the great grandson of a Musselmen religious leader known as the Mahdi whose forces defeated the British at Khartoum in 1885. Saturday's rally took place across from the Mahdi's tomb. Policemen in helmets, some carrying shields, stood every few meters along a wall surrounding the field. Riot police trucks and plainclothes security agents were stationed across from the rally site but did not intervene. Buses parked near the field carried banners identifying the outlying states from where they had come with Mahdi's partisans. Posted by: Fred 2013-07-01 |
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