Sudan’s Communist Party ‘won’t join Tagaddum talks’

The Communist Party of Sudan (CPoS) has rejected the invitation by the Civil Democratic Forces (Tagaddum) to join talks to discuss issues of war and peace in Sudan.

The CPoS say in a statement yesterday that the decision to refuse to join the table with Tagaddum (meaning progress in Arabic) is consistent with the decision of the party’s central committee to only deal with political forces and local, regional, and international civil society organisations. They point out that the party’s Central War Committee had previously taken a decision to withdraw from the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC)*.

The statement explained that the CPoS presence would be “a big mistake” after the FFC has “turned its back on the legitimate demands of the Sudanese people included in the charters of the December Revolution”, and added: “The party has criticised itself publicly for this mistake and pledged that this mistake would not be repeated again…

“Sudan is going through these circumstances because of the actions of these political and military forces. We cannot sit with them to justify their mistakes of violating the covenants of the revolutionary forces and the masses of the Sudanese people.”

The party considers joining talks with the FCC at this stage to be a “legitimisation of the presence of the military on the scene in the future”, adding that they cannot turn a blind eye to this.

“It would be considered a betrayal of the choices and sacrifices of the Sudanese people, and it is a position that is inconsistent with the political, moral and legal responsibilities of the CPoS.”

The CPoS was responding to an invitation by the Civil Democratic Forces alliance (Tagaddum), consisting of the Sudanese Congress Party, the National Umma Party, the SPLM-Democratic Revolutionary Movement, and other members of the Forces for Freedom and Change-Central Council (FFC-CC), to Sudanese hold-out parties and groups calling on them to join “urgent and direct meetings to build the broadest democratic civil front possible and to discuss ways to end the current war”.

In a statement received by Radio Dabanga, Tagaddum pledged that its members “will spare no effort to end the war in the country” and underscored the importance of communicating with all “revolutionary and patriotic forces seeking to stop the war and bring about a democratic civil transformation”.

* The FFC has been prone to divisions since its formation in early January 2019. The National Umma Party (NUP), the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), and the Socialist Arabic Ba’ath Party, which already witnessed internal schisms during the Al Bashir regime, fragmented further due to opposing views and standpoints on talks with the military. The Communist Party of Sudan withdrew from the FFC at the end of 2020. The mainstream Ba’ath Party left the coalition two years later. The FFC-CC now consists of several (splinter) political parties and new groups such as the SPLM–Democratic Revolutionary Movement (DRM).