Despite Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok’s release, there are still many unknowns for Sudan’s democratic transition.
Almost a month after seizing power, Sudan’s military leadership on Sunday released civilian Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and signed an agreement reinstating him to office as part of Sudan’s gradual transition to democracy. Hamdok, who has been under house arrest since late last month, made a televised address to the nation at the signing of an agreement between Hamdok’s civilian government and the military junta, headed by Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, to restore the transitional government put in place after the ouster of former dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019. “The signing of this deal opens the door wide enough to address all the challenges of the transitional period,” Hamdok said during the address. Hamdok also thanked “regional and global friends” who helped broker the deal in his address; according to the AP, the United States and the United Nations both played “crucial roles” in Hamdok’s reinstatement. Sunday’s agreement, according to Egyptian media outlet Ahram Online, requires the formation of a new, technocratic transition government and adherence to an amended version of the power-sharing agreement first enacted in 2019 after al-Bashir’s downfall, as well the release of politicians arrested by the military government and a transparent investigation into the deaths that occurred during coup protests. At least 40 protesters have been killed since late October, and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said in a statement Thursday that regime forces used live ammunition against peaceful protesters. “Sudan remains the priority,” Hamdok said on Sunday after his release. “We will work on building a solid democratic system for Sudan.” However, as Joseph Siegle, director of research at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, told Vox on Sunday, the full contents and context of the agreement — as well as what each side had to surrender to reach it — are still unknown. “There’s a lot of room for interpretation and misinterpretation,” Siegle said, including as to what role the military will be expected to play in the restored transitional government. Because of the uncertainty still surrounding the agreement and concern over the military’s role going forward, pro-democracy protests continued on Sunday as Sudanese activists demand accountability for the coup. In Khartoum, the capital, thousands of people marched on the presidential palace as Hamdok spoke, Bloomberg reporter Mohammad Alamin told BBC’s Newshour Sunday. The coalition group Forces for Freedom and Change, which was instrumental in al-Bashir’s overthrow and which nominated Hamdok for prime minister in 2019, has already refused to recognize the agreement. “For us, they have to be held accountable for the crimes they have committed,” Siddiq Abu-Fawwaz, a member of the media coalition for the FFC, told Newshour host Julian Marshall on Sunday. “Who is Hamdok to make an agreement on his own, and to call it a national initiative? He is a man who was in prison, and they were negotiating with him at the house, with a gun to his head.” Nonetheless, the US Embassy in Khartoum released a statement Sunday, in conjunction with Norway, Switzerland, the UK, the European Union, and Canada, praising the release of Hamdok and expressing solidarity with the Sudanese people; the UN Integrated Transition Assistance Mission Sudan also tweeted a statement of cautious optimism.
