An organizer of the 1989 coup by Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir resigned on Tuesday from the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and the Council of States in protest against the parliament’s approval of a state of emergency and the spread of corruption in the country.
Brigadier General Salaheddine Muhammad Ahmad Karrar told Asharq Al-Awsat that he resigned from the NCP to protest against the way in which the state of emergency was authorized.
The National Legislature, including the upper and lower chambers (National Assembly and the Council of States), reduced on Monday the duration of the state of emergency from one year to six months – an unprecedented move in dealing with Bashir’s orders - but Karrar saw the move as a failure to launch dialogue with the opposition.
Karrar, one of the architects of the coup that brought Bashir to power on June 30, 1989, served as a member of the Revolutionary Command Council and took over its economic committee.
He interpreted the state of emergency as an attempt to put the “armed forces in confrontation with the citizens.”
“We refuse to make them enemies of the Sudanese people,” he stated.
Meanwhile, the Sudanese Professionals’ Gathering announced it would not participate in an international meetings of the opposition in Paris next week to discuss the situation in Sudan.
The gathering, which is spearheading the anti-government protests in Sudan, said in a statement on Tuesday that it had received an invitation from the Public International Law & Policy Group to participate in the meetings to discuss the developments in the country.
“We apologized for not attending and we express our full appreciation to our partners in the political forces,” the statement added.
