Sudan will hold elections within 9 months, the Military Transition Council
By Samuel Abuya
The Sudanese military has announced that the country will go into elections within nine months from now saying everything that the military had agreed on with protesters as far as the transitional government goes stands cancelled.
The army’s General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan made the announcement after Sudan’s military forcefully cleared a weeks-long sit-in protest right outside the army headquarters in the country’s capital, Khartoum, leaving at least 30 people dead and hundreds sustaining injuries. The protestors have been calling on the army generals to hand over power to civilian rule.
“The Military council decides on the following: cancelling what was agreed on and stopping negotiating with the Alliance for Freedom and Change, and to call for general elections within a period not exceeding nine months,” Burhan said in a statement aired on the country’s state television early Tuesday.
Hurhan also noted that the elections will be held under supervision of the “regional and international supervision”.
What we know the Transitional Military Council had agreed with protesters
The two sides that have been in a pull and push situation in Sudan, the army and the protesters, had reached an agreement on quite a number of things including a three-year transition period of transferring power to a civilian administration and that the country’s parliament would be made up of 300 members for the transition. They had also agreed that two-thirds of the 300 members would be drawn from the Alliance for Freedom and Change, a group that has been leading the demonstrations and others would have come from other political groups.
The killing of protesters in Sudan yesterday drew sharp criticism from the international community including US and the United Nations who both condemned the killing of unarmed civilians.
The UN Security Council is set to meet behind closed doors to discuss the situation in Sudan.
After the army killed protesters, the group leading the demonstrations ended “any political contact and negotiations with the military transition council” even as the army said it will open investigations into the killings.
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