{"id":53800,"date":"2025-09-04T03:02:21","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T00:02:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/?p=53800"},"modified":"2025-09-04T03:02:21","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T00:02:21","slug":"politicians-and-their-illusions-escaping-reality-in-sudan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/04\/politicians-and-their-illusions-escaping-reality-in-sudan\/","title":{"rendered":"Politicians and Their Illusions: Escaping Reality in Sudan"},"content":{"rendered":"

By: Zain Al-Abidin Saleh Abdelrahman<\/strong><\/p>\n

When political thinking drifts away from the realities on the ground, it turns into little more than futility. The fundamental problem of Sudanese politicians lies in their illusions. They construct imaginary worlds within their own minds and present them as absolute truths, insisting that dissenting voices are simply denying reality. Ironically, these very illusions are at the heart of their repeated failures.<\/p>\n

The late political scientist Samuel Huntington, in his seminal work Political Order in Changing Societies, wrote about Sudan, noting that modernization and change in the country were historically driven by the military, which ruled for decades. He argued that true modernization requires shifts in traditional social, cultural, and economic beliefs. But the question is: how can transformation occur if the very foundations lack the tools for change? Reality must be acknowledged, even when some try to enshrine outdated ideas as sacred. Human action is inherently dynamic \u2014 if internal forces fail to change, external pressures eventually will, especially in today\u2019s interconnected world.<\/p>\n

Among the illusions Sudanese politicians must confront are the following:<\/p>\n

1. The December 2018 Revolution: This uprising was born in the streets, not within party headquarters. Its sole objective was the fall of the al-Bashir regime \u2014 captured in the slogan \u201cJust Fall, That\u2019s All.\u201d After Bashir\u2019s ouster, political leaders signed a constitutional declaration with the military, effectively ending the revolutionary phase. From that moment, legitimacy shifted from \u201crevolutionary\u201d to \u201cconstitutional,\u201d and responsibility for the transitional period\u2019s failures lies squarely with those who governed during it.<\/p>\n

2. The October 25, 2021 Coup: This military takeover had nothing to do with the revolution itself but stemmed from escalating tensions between civilian and military factions. Any seasoned politician \u2014 or even ordinary protesters chanting \u201cDissolve the militias\u201d and \u201cArmy to the barracks\u201d \u2014 should have known that provoking the military would invite a response. The coup reflected the civilian leadership\u2019s lack of political experience.<\/p>\n

3. The Rise of New Political Actors: Some leaders who emerged after the revolution claim to represent new political forces. In reality, many of them came from \u201cindependent\u201d student movements at universities. Their rise to leadership was not due to their own strength but because Islamists and communists used them as tactical pawns in their own ideological battles.<\/p>\n

4. The Central Political Divide: Today\u2019s political scene remains dominated by two camps \u2014 Islamists, fragmented but active, and communists, who have managed to spread their rhetoric (\u201crevolutionary legitimacy,\u201d \u201cwar on remnants of the old regime\u201d) among newer parties and segments of youth.<\/p>\n

5. The Real Political Struggle: A durable solution requires Islamists and communists to sit together at the negotiating table, agree on a constitutional conference, and set principles for a permanent constitution. Islamists remain active and confident of their electoral base, while communist leaders are largely absent, relying on others to carry their message. Internal renewal within the communist leadership could be the first step toward resolution.<\/p>\n

6. The Traditional Parties: The Umma and Democratic Unionist parties have proven ineffective, both before and during the current conflict. These parties do not aspire to lead; they simply aim to secure symbolic representation, whether under authoritarian rule or democracy, to preserve their interests.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Anyone seeking to solve Sudan\u2019s crisis must begin with these realities. Islamists do not fear dialogue because they trust their electoral weight. Communists, by contrast, fear elections and instead place their hopes in \u201crevolutionary legitimacy\u201d \u2014 believing that another mass uprising could topple all rivals and bring them to power. But such dreams are unlikely to materialize.<\/p>\n

Sudan\u2019s political future depends not on illusions, but on clear-eyed recognition of these truths.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: Zain Al-Abidin Saleh Abdelrahman When political thinking drifts away from the realities on the ground, it turns into little more than futility. The fundamental problem of Sudanese politicians lies in their illusions. They construct imaginary worlds within their own minds and present them as absolute truths, insisting that dissenting voices are simply denying reality. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53800","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\/53800","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=53800"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53801,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53800\/revisions\/53801"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}