{"id":42066,"date":"2025-02-02T13:26:09","date_gmt":"2025-02-02T10:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/?p=42066"},"modified":"2025-02-02T13:26:09","modified_gmt":"2025-02-02T10:26:09","slug":"liberal-democracy-and-what-will-you-do-with-it-you-leftist-liberal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/02\/liberal-democracy-and-what-will-you-do-with-it-you-leftist-liberal\/","title":{"rendered":"“Liberal Democracy: And What Will You Do with It, You Leftist Liberal?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

By: Abdallah Ali Ibrahim<\/strong><\/p>\n

“We fear that by inviting Colonel Garang to speak before your (German) parliament, you are sending a discouraging signal to Sudanese democrats who have struggled for multiparty democracy for four long decades.”<\/p>\n

On a morning in early 1989, I made my way from my office at the University of Khartoum to the West German Embassy nearby\u2014though it took me some time to locate it. At the gate, I requested a meeting with the West German ambassador. When asked about my purpose, I stated that I carried a memorandum, which I had taken from my office before leaving. The memorandum expressed my protest against the German Parliament\u2019s invitation to Colonel John Garang to address its members.<\/p>\n

The real frustration, however, was not so much with the West Germans and their parliament as it was with the reckless left\u2014both the arbitrary and the deliberate.<\/p>\n

Upon returning from my academic mission in 1987, I found that the Sudanese political circles\u2014represented today by groups like “Taqaddum” and “Al-Jadhari”\u2014had abandoned hope in liberal democracy, despite having sacrificed for it throughout two decades under Nimeiri\u2019s rule. The rising political star at the time was not those who engaged in the democratic process, like Sadiq al-Mahdi, who won the elections, whether people loved or hated him, but rather Colonel John Garang, leader of the Sudan People\u2019s Liberation Movement (SPLM), who had boycotted the 1986 elections altogether.<\/p>\n

Even more troubling, members of these leftist groups had begun secretly joining Garang\u2019s camps to train for war against the democratic system in Khartoum. In my regular column in Al-Khartoum newspaper, I strongly criticized this leftist-liberal betrayal of democracy. This stance was not a mere personal insight but a commitment to the principles of my Communist Party, which had, in its 1956 Third Conference document “The Path to Peace and Democracy in Sudan,” affirmed parliamentary democracy as the road to socialism. Only through democratic rights\u2014such as freedom of expression and organization\u2014starting with workers and the oppressed in their unions, could the masses see the promise of socialism.<\/p>\n

Yet when democracy arrived in 1985, it became clear that no one really wanted it. Reading today’s left-liberals passionately singing the praises of democracy astonishes me, given that they never truly supported it\u2014let alone fought for it\u2014except in the company of a rebel army for the second time. I recall a phrase I wrote in Al-Khartoum around 1988 when I observed the mass exodus of arbitrary leftists from liberal democracy. I compared their abandonment of a system they had sacrificed so much for to a famous incident involving the brilliant Al-Hilal footballer, “Al-Sadd Al-Ali.”<\/p>\n

It was said that after skillfully taking possession of the ball from his opponents, Al-Sadd Al-Ali was sprinting toward the goal when a teammate called out, asking him to pass the ball. Al-Sadd Al-Ali, apparently unimpressed by his teammate\u2019s ability, responded in his distinct Egyptian dialect: “And what will you do with it, my friend?”<\/p>\n

That was precisely how these leftist groups treated democracy. Their betrayal of it was what compelled me to carry my protest memorandum alone, in solitude so profound that I could almost hear my own footsteps on the ground.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Text of the Letter (Translated from Arabic):<\/p>\n

To the President of the German Parliament,<\/p>\n

Greetings,<\/p>\n

I wish to express my protest regarding your invitation to Colonel John Garang to address the German Parliament. In doing so, I do not intend to infringe upon the parliament\u2019s right to establish investigative committees to examine contentious global issues in the spirit of fairness, which requires listening to competing perspectives. However, true democracy, in undertaking such idealistic initiatives, must be extremely cautious not to disappoint the expectations of fellow democrats.<\/p>\n

I do not share your view that Colonel Garang, who adopts guerrilla warfare tactics, is a suitable figure to address an institution governed by democratic principles. Garang has repeatedly rejected calls for him to abandon armed conflict and engage in Sudan\u2019s nascent democracy, contributing to its development in a manner that serves the Sudanese people. More importantly, his discourse on the “New Sudan” is either silent on the nature of multiparty democracy or advocates for an ambiguous “new democracy,” bearing ominous signs of a transition to a closed, authoritarian state.<\/p>\n

We fear that by inviting Colonel Garang to speak before your parliament, you are sending a discouraging signal to Sudanese democrats who have struggled for multiparty democracy for four long decades. The German Parliament\u2019s reception of a figure who categorically rejects democratic institutions in his own country suggests that German democracy prefers to remain neutral in the Sudanese debate between ballots and bullets. Such a stance\u2014an unprincipled neutrality\u2014undermines the moral fabric of democracy.<\/p>\n

The German Parliament is free to establish channels of dialogue with the SPLM, and I believe Sudanese democrats would welcome this, recognizing the potential benefits of your engagement and counsel with a guerrilla movement. However, inviting Colonel Garang, the emblematic leader of the movement, particularly after his forces have “liberated” a number of ordinary electoral districts in South Sudan, suggests that various lobbying factions supporting him have orchestrated this event as a high-profile public relations exercise.<\/p>\n

Awaiting your response, I remain,<\/p>\n

Sincerely,<\/p>\n

Dr. Abdallah Ali Ibrahim
\nDirector, Institute for Research on Democracy and Social Change (Under Establishment), Khartoum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: Abdallah Ali Ibrahim “We fear that by inviting Colonel Garang to speak before your (German) parliament, you are sending a discouraging signal to Sudanese democrats who have struggled for multiparty democracy for four long decades.” On a morning in early 1989, I made my way from my office at the University of Khartoum to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13023,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42066"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42067,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42066\/revisions\/42067"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}