After former dictator, Omar Al-Bashir, was disgracefully thrown out of the office on April 11 after 30 years in power, Sudanese are not showing any signs of relaxing their demands for democracy. The military has since taken charge and declared that it’ll remain in power for the next two years before transitioning to a democratically elected president. But the people are not having it. Instead, they want immediate elections out of the fear that allowing the military to remain in power for that long, will only be detrimental to the institutionalization of democracy.
The history of military coups in Africa, however, shows that there aren’t many options for Sudan to successfully democratize besides organizing elections to completely remove the remnants of the Al-Bashir regime—many of who are highly ranked within the military commission. The failure to achieve this might make the sacrifice of the last few months useless.
I joined i24 News’ David Shuster and Shayna Estulin on Crossroads to discuss the situation.
The head of the military council and former defense minister, Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn Auf, resigned from the council and was succeeded by Abdel Fattah Burhan.