Abdelwahid El Nur: Sudan needs Rule of Law, sound institutions, to achieve aims of revolution

Sudan needs to establish Rule of Law, as well as sound institutions, in order to achieve the aims of the April 2019 revolution that toppled the 30-year Al Bashir dictatorship. This entails listening to the demands of the people, toppling the current ruling junta, and disbanding militias to form unified national Sudanese military forces, the leader of the mainstream Sudan Liberation Movement-Abdelwahid (SLM-AW) faction, Abdelwahid El Nur, asserts.

Speaking to Radio Dabanga yesterday, El Nur was responding to the invitation made to him by the deputy leader of the ruling junta and head of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo ‘Hemeti, to return to dialogue and negotiation.

“Achieving the revolution's requirements enables the establishment of a state of law and institutions,” he said, indicating that “the required dialogue must listen to the demands of the Sudanese revolution, which necessarily means toppling the coup, disbanding all militias, including the Rapid Support Forces, collecting weapons, and making them the monopoly of the state represented in its unified national military forces”.

He pointed out that achieving the revolution's requirements is what enables a real dialogue that leads to the restructuring of the state and the establishment of Rule of Law, and “institutions that guarantee full democratic transformation and sustainable peace”.

In its most recent official reaction to the speech of junta leader Gen Abdelfattah El Burhan on July 4, in which he announced the military’s withdrawal from the current governing bodies, and gave the civilian opposition groups in the country the opportunity to form a government of technocrats, has mostly been met with scepticism and rejection, the mainstream Sudan Liberation Movement under the leadership of Abdelwahid El Nur also said that the speech “did not bring anything new”. In a statement yesterday, he called the speech “a desperate attempt to break the mass siege imposed on the putschists [by the mass protests] and to create a gap between the various revolutionary groups”.

El Nur is known as a resolute holdout leader. He has in the past stuck to his position that he will only join negotiations after security and stability have been realised in Darfur.