Yasser Al-Atta Brings about a Change in Dialogue Agenda

By: Zain Al-Abidin Saleh Abdul Rahman

Lieutenant General Yasser Al-Atta, Assistant Commander-in-Chief, took advantage of the meeting with the National Forces Coordination in Wadi Sayyidna and said, “The army will not hand over power to political or civil forces or parties without elections.” This statement raised heavy dust among the political forces between supporters and opponents, and it was considered by those who reject Al-Atta’s statement that they are planning for a future totalitarian regime, and some others consider Al-Atta’s statement not an expression of the ruling authority. The important issue in this controversy is that the majority on the opposition side is afraid of opening political dialogue clearly on the issues raised. Yasser Al-Atta is not a politician so as to involve us in Controversy, does this represent his vision or the vision of the institution to which he belongs? The two titles that Al-Atta holds, “Assistant Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Member of the Sovereign Council,” confirm that this is the vision of the armed forces. Al-Atta cannot stand in a military podium and give his personal statement. As I mentioned repeatedly in previous articles, “Who is creating the event in Sudan?” Now the army is canceling all the previous agenda, and the current one in the Sudanese political arena, in order to replace it with a new agenda. The army presents its vision for the post-war period, the “transitional period,” which ends with elections, after which the legitimately elected forces assume power. Instead of the political forces getting lost and flying into the realm of imagination, they must present their alternative vision, instead of issuing statements that do not create a
new reality, and it does not help resolve the crisis. The army read the reality well, and wanted to send two messages. The first presented a new agenda for the political arena to debate, then it opened a political debate as a message to all Sudanese, saying that the army is in complete control over the administration. The war that ultimately leads to victory… The second is that the majority of the Sudanese people stand with the army in the Battle of dignity is considered a shift of the street in favor of the army, which made the balance of power tilt to one side, “the interest of the army,” and the structure of the army’s vision that the political forces are divided and not united. Every coalition that tries to set conditions for others will pose challenges for the transitional period.
The other issue: The army also wants to send a message to the American envoy Tom Perbelo, who is touring the capitals of the countries neighboring Sudan and the IGAD countries and meeting with politicians outside Sudan, as he said in his tweet (that meeting with young Sudanese activists was a source of inspiration for him to end this conflict, and also in build Sudan. The message is that if America has a special agenda or wants to poke its nose into Sudanese political affairs, this is completely rejected. However, if it wants to play the role of mediator, then there is the Jeddah platform, and the understanding with the authority will be on that platform. Another political battle that America, the European Union, and other countries in the region want to lead in the interest of a group of political activists is again unacceptable… and even the submission of initiatives by external countries is also unacceptable… The political process must be Sudanese, far from… External agendas… If there are political forces that fear leading a political dialogue with other Sudanese forces to reach a national consensus in order to build Sudan, it is better for them to dissolve themselves instead of betting on a foreigner to be a lever for them…
What is understood from Lieutenant General Yasser Al-Atta’s speech is that the army will supervise the transitional period. This does not mean that it will rule, but rather that it will form a civil government of technocrats, which will carry out the executive tasks of the state, and the army will carry out sovereign tasks until the elections. The country after the December Revolution had a political mission to dismantle the one-party state in favor of pluralism, economic reform with the aim of improving citizens’ living conditions, establishing commissions, especially the Election Commission, and carrying out a population census, so the country was not in the cycle of war and its consequences. Now the situation is completely different for a country emerging from a war that targeted the infrastructure, the majority of state institutions, service institutions, and citizens’ housing, and weapons are spread throughout Sudan, and the country is now threatened by the majority of its parties with mercenaries and countries supporting them.. In this period, the emergence of political conflicts is not desirable, hich causes the country to lose its ability to make the required decisions regarding security threats. The presence of the army during the transitional period is an extremely important issue for controlling security and confronting threats.
The majority of the political leaders presented in the political arena now are in one direction, how to reach power… and the political struggle that was going on before the war over the “Framework Agreement” was a struggle for power, and it has nothing to do with the issue of democratic transformation. The political forces that came with the term “non-dumping politically”, are forces whose agenda was the president’s quotas for constitutional jobs.. and these people said before that it is not possible to “try the tested” and now they do not have any new vision.. that their attempts to look after the outside to provide then with a lever is useless. It lost its value in the conflict because its result was war. Therefore, these forces must reconsider their political project, which has lost its eligibility, and come up with an alternative project that looks at the process of democratic transformation and its requirements away from the power’s bet. The army presented its vision, which the forces are required to present. The politician consider his visions as a dialogue agenda and not decisions for implementation…
Events are escalating, and negotiating to return the militia again to have a military or political presence is an issue rejected by the army and the people who are fighting with it. The political forces must base their visions on the assumption that the militia will leave the scene, and those who seek to restore the militia believe that the absence of the militia will reduce their chances of participating in the political process, even though no one has called for the exclusion of any politic., they are the only ones carrying the exclusion card. In conclusion, the army presented its vision and it was up to the political forces to clarify their vision, before the events change and the army imposes a new agenda that was compatible with the new changes… The strange thing is that it was the political forces that were creating the events by presenting initiatives and ideas, but those who were engaged in mental work were absent and politics turned into chants and slogans that had no effect in reality, and the street is ineffective. We ask God for good insight.