Options for Freezing the National Crisis (2-2)

By: Qurashi Awad

Our future is undoubtedly in democracy in accordance with the standards stipulated in international human rights conventions. I think this is what is agreed upon among most political actors who benefited from their previous experiences in repeating totalitarian whispers in the name of new democracy or protecting cultural and religious particularities, and by large sectors of the popular masses. This is a position that does not mean that we are dependent on specific countries just because they implement democracy in their countries, as what concerns us is their commitment to those standards at the international level and to the extent that their foreign policy towards our country reflects them, especially since experiences have shown that the countries most committed to democracy have more than one standard in their relations with others. their positions were often not responsive to our national interests.
The economic policies of Hamdouk’s government, especially the lifting of subsidies, were opposed by broad popular sectors, even though they constituted an unprecedented response to the conditions of global financial institutions associated with democratic countries.
But that does not mean that our interest is achieved by entering into hostility or rupture with those democratic countries. They are major countries and have the technology and expertise we need, and we can engage in an exchange of interests with them without turning our backs on other countries, even if they are non-democratic, as long as dealing with them is based on equality and the exchange of interests. Countries like China and Russia have what we benefit from in terms of special technology in the field of irrigation, roads, and infrastructure. They can come to our country and invest in it without interfering in our internal affairs or asking us to establish military bases or spy centers, neither by them nor by anyone else.
But siding with one camp in international politics over the other is an economic and technical view far removed from politics. Perhaps the transitional government did not realize this until it became clear of Russia’s influence on the course of internal events from its position as a superpower, as it was able to prevent the issuance of a Security Council resolution condemning the generals for their coup against the civil government. Perhaps the most important difference between a politician and an expert or activist lies in this.
The politician seeks to sail his country to safety amid international contradictions and to benefit from them. As for the expert, since he is primarily concerned with developing the economy independently of the nature of the political arrangements, he can carry out this task by adopting a political perception biased towards one of the poles of the international conflict as long as he is satisfied to be part of a country’s foreign policy towards his country, without taking into account that the other parties to the conflict will not view him in isolation from the position he has accepted for himself. It is not in their interest for him to settle in power or even to come to power. If Russia had been reassured that the transitional government and the political and social forces that support it were not against its interests in Sudan, it would not have been forced to stand with the coup plotters and provide protection for them by using the veto.
The politician is required to look at international and regional interventions in resolving internal conflicts from the perspective of serving the major political goals of the state, such as preserving national sovereignty, ensuring the country’s unity, the stability of its governance system, the sustainability of democracy, and the distribution of wealth fairly among the segments of the people, and not only from the perspective of ensuring the flow of foreign investments, despite the importance of focusing on this aspect.
What is required now is to determine the nature of the state we seek and to set the societal goals that we seek to achieve through it, away from foreign experience and without self-reliance. We are a member state in international and regional systems and signatories to international and regional agreements. The world has the right to intervene and be sensitive to our problems and help reach solutions to them through known, legitimate means. Individual countries of the world also have the right to be concerned about the atrocities taking place in our country and seek to help us overcome them in a way that ensures the preservation of the safety and future of the state, its independence, and the protection of its resources.

The open, independent, national tendency drawn from the experience of the people of Sudan is capable of distinguishing between the nature of one intervention and another. The wise political leader is the one who is able to take his position on the forms of international interventions on the basis and standards agreed upon by the people of Sudan by answering the question that has been troubling them since independence, which is: How is Sudan governed? It is an answer that requires a critical and disciplined view based on societal foundations rather than relying on international experiences that seek to generalize the South African, Kenyan and Rwandan experiences. Although some of these experiences have fundamental observations by their people. In South Africa, although the settlement paved the way for Africans to reach decision-making positions, it preserved the interests of the old regime, as whites still control the joints of the economy. What we fear is that our settlement will preserve the interests of the old regime. It is a system that is not limited to the Ingaz era only, but has been extending since 1978, when the late President Jaafar Numeiri accepted the package of economic policies that was presented and continued to be presented continuously by the International Monetary Fund. These are the same measures presented by Bashir Omar in the budget of the third democracy government. The Ingaz budgets followed from the era of Abdul Rahim Hamdi until the shock policies in their later days presented by Moataz Moussa. Then Hamdouk adopted it, including a shock that re-posed the question that had remained limited to Islamists since it was raised by the late Tayeb Salih.
These are policies whose continuation means preserving the most important element of the comprehensive national crisis.
The current stage requires rebuilding the state, preserving its reputation in international forums, and restoring its foreign relations in accordance with the exchange of interests and dealing as equals. It must also look with insight that combines understanding and compassion at the state of economic collapse and the decline in the standard of living among the popular sectors, which requires it to intervene decisively in the economic process until it has revenues that enable it to overcome the budget deficit, eliminate the need for foreign loans, and enable it to spend on Services and provide assistance to its people. In most of the projects implemented by international organizations in partnership with the Government of Sudan, the State remained unable to pay its contribution even though it was concerned with providing assistance to its citizens. This is because it is a country without revenues after it lost its sources of income other than taxes as a result of the privatization of public sector institutions that provided umbrellas of protection for small producers, which left them plundered by usury merchants and brokers and pushed them to leave their original professions and flee to the outskirts of the cities, especially Khartoum, and work in marginal crafts. It is possible to imagine their situation now, after the largest capital in Sudan stopped circulating which could have been able to provide a living for more than 10 million people, after the state of devastation to which popular markets were exposed and the systematic plundering of citizens’ savings and capitalism working in the field of food production and petrochemicals.