Uthman Abubakar
12 June 2009
It surprises no one that President Omar Al-Bashir of the Sudan is perfecting a sit-tight bid with a rock-solid plan to contest the seat of the presidency in the general elections of his conflict-rocked country, billed for February, 2010. History is laden with innumerable instaances of leaders super-gluing, or attempting very desperately to superglue, tightly to power even if the existing imperatives of their entities necessitate otherwise.
They stop at nothing to muster every required strength to maintain the firmest possible grip of power until coup d'état, severe ill health, severe senility or death, or a popular revolution do them part. Are the entities crisis-ridden or, in more ferocious sense, conflict-shattered? They would want to be seen presiding over the conflict and the shattering, even if they are the fuels of the conflict themselves and their continued ruling may stoke the existing situation.
The Republic of the Sudan, the biggest country in Africa, with a population of over forty million, is one of the most beleaguered African nations now.
On one hand, there is President Omar Al-Bashir, who took over power in 1989 and is already marking time to contest the presidency on the platform of his political party, the National Congress Party (NCP), as its sole candidate in the general elections of February, 2010.
On the other hand, there is the Republic of the Sudan rocked by the decades-old conflict with the South Sudan, which has simmered down now by the grace of the autonomy granted the ten-state region in the grand process of, possibly, granting it self determination according to a political timetable drawn by both the NCP-premised Khartoum authorities in the North, and the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM) in the South; the crisis of the three-state Darfur; and the conflict with (the Khartoum authorities would call it the aggression of) the neighbouring Chad Republic.
Very significantly, there is also the Warrant of Arrest by the International Criminal Court (ICC), the sword of Damocles, hanging over Al-Bashir, on the charge of genocide, served on him last March. What is the organic linkage between these four issues factoring vitally in the politics of the Sudan, and the sit-tight bid of Al-Bashir?
In his capacity as the head of government of a sovereign nation, according to the Statute of Rome establishing the ICC, he is immune to arrest by any global judicial outfit. The moment he is no more in this privileged capacity, he is bereft of the immunity, and the sword of Damocles would be let loose on him. The ICC would swoop at him and pick him in the fashion of a hawk on a defenseless lonely chick. So, he 'must' sit tight on the seat in the comfort of the immunity, and continue managing the relationship and diplomatic intercourses between his political personae on one hand, and the global judicial outfits and the entire international community on the other.
The Khartoum authorities and their cronies are in a concerted sensitization campaign on the Sudanese public and all other friends in sympathetic parts of the continental and international community that the ICC Warrant is a travesty of justice against which everyone must rise in solidarity with Al-Bashir. They swoop on the ICC, challenging it to, first, serve such warrant on the former President Bush of the United States for his genocide in Iraq before it does so on Al-Bashir.
"Of course, as a matter of fact, there is not a single justification for issuing the warrant of arrest against a sitting president," Dr. Lam Akol, a South Sudanese and former Foreign Affairs Minister in the NCP/SPLM Unity Government, now a member of the Sudanese National Assembly, argued, maintaining, "neither the statute of Rome, on which the ICC is based, nor normal diplomacy can allow that."
Dr. Akol argued emphatically: "The concept of sovereignty of state, on which the 193 member United Nations Charter is predicated, does not allow a sitting president to be indicted outside his own country. The ICC Charter itself in the Rome statute in Article 98 says that nothing in that statute would make a country that is party to the Rome statute and, therefore, member of ICC, would allow the ICC to arrest somebody with immunity in his own country unless that country he belongs to withdraws that immunity. So, this covers anybody enjoying immunity, let alone the president against being arrested by the ICC."
According to him, "All this has nothing to do with law. It is all politics. Suppose there is a crime committed. Has Bashir gone personally to the ground to commit the crime? Somebody must have done it on his behalf under his orders. The law should have apprehended the person who committed the crime. Let him be the one to say, 'I got my orders from the president.' There is nothing that justifies the indictment of the president."
He stated conclusively: "We have passed a resolution here in the Parliament that no single citizen should ever go to The Hague and appear before the ICC because Sudan is not a party to the ICC, it is not a signatory to the Rome statute. It is just a game of the strong playing with the weaker one. Because Sudan is weak, they can do anything they want with it."
In spite of the protracted crisis with the South Sudan and the possible preference for self determination with the status of an independent country by the peoples of the South, the Khartoum authorities seem at pains to let go of that region for whatever fortunes accruable from there to a united Sudan.
The referendum to be conducted there on the self determination, as a vital feature of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) reached with the ten-state region, represented by the SPLM, and the Sudanese government, represented by the NCP, is slated for 2011, a year after the general election, which Al-Bashir would, most possibly, have won.
Al-Bashir 'must' continue presiding over the process of the CPA with the Government of South Sudan (GoSS) and perfect the play of pranks or lobby right from across the South Sudan itself, through the entire Sudan to the continental and global spheres. So, he 'must' sit tight on the presidency.
"We are just implementing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that has put forward two options for the Southerners, either they decide to be part of the Sudan, which will be respected, the choice is theirs, or not. If the choice is that the South secedes, it will also be respected," assured Dr. Lam Akol.
"But of course, the two parties to the agreement, the SPLM and the Sudan government represented by the National Congress Party, both of them have committed themselves to work for the unity of the Sudan, that they will advise the voters (in the referendum) to vote for a united Sudan. Of course, the decision is not in their hands. It is in the hands of the people of Southern Sudan. They may listen to the advice of the SPLM, they may not," he recalled.
The parliamentarian weighed the pros and cons of South Sudan secession: "Secession is an old sentiment since the beginning of the problem of the South Sudan in 1947. They have been fighting for a long time and they say, may be the best way for us is to part ways. There are people who think like this. But there is a counter argument. We as southerners have ruled ourselves for eleven years.
That experience has opened our eyes to ethnicities, how power can be used for or against certain tribes. Even today, four years after the CPA, the Government of South Sudan (GoSS) has been unable to deliver basic services. There is the issue of insecurity, which has become rampant there. The corruption there is on a very large scale. So, this evokes another thought by other people that if this is the future that I am going to have, the devil I know is better than the devil I don't know. Even the dye-hard separatists are now thinking twice that how will we look like after secession if this is the way we are treating ourselves?"
Along this line, therefore, the Sudanese government is, most probably, mounting an intense clandestine lobby, and could be prepared for an intense play of pranks to fade away the sentiment, douse the raging flames of any agitation and, possibly, crumble the issue of granting self determination to South Sudan before the referendum.
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