Sudan's top general says he won't run for office in new govt

KHARTOUM, Sudan — Sudan’s apical wide has promised that helium won’t clasp a authorities presumption aft planned elections successful 2023, 2 weeks aft helium toppled a transitional authorities successful a wide condemned coup.

The subject person down the takeover, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, has repeatedly promised to manus implicit powerfulness to an elected civilian authorities and said helium volition not beryllium a portion of it. His announcement that helium volition not tally for bureau does not preclude different apical generals from shedding their subject titles and becoming candidates.

Late past month, the subject dissolved the country’s transitional authorities and detained much than 100 authorities officials and governmental leaders and a ample fig of protesters and activists. Since then, astatine slightest 13 anti-coup protesters person been killed owed to the excessive unit utilized by the country’s information forces, according to Sudanese doctors and the U.N. On Sunday, information forces tear-gassed demonstrators and rounded up much than 100 people, mostly anti-coup teachers successful Khartoum.

In comments aired Sunday by the Al-Jazeera outer tv quality network, Burhan besides said that information forces were not liable for the protesters’ deaths.

Burhan has maintained the subject was compelled to instrumentality implicit due to the fact that of quarrels betwixt governmental parties that helium claimed could pb to civilian war. But the takeover besides took spot weeks earlier helium was expected to surrender powerfulness of the country’s apical governing assemblage to a civilian.

Sudan has been successful the midst of a fragile modulation to ideology since a fashionable uprising forced the military’s removal of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir and his Islamist authorities successful April 2019. For weeks earlier the coup, determination had been mounting tensions betwixt subject and civilian leaders implicit the gait of the transition.

In different development, the almighty person of Sudan’s ample paramilitary radical the Rapid Support Forces, made his archetypal nationalist comments since the coup. Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo said successful a video connection released by his bureau precocious Sunday that the generals seized powerfulness to “correct the people of the people’s revolution,” and execute stability.

He accused a “handful” of governmental parties successful the authorities of monopolizing powerfulness and neglecting the people’s interests. Dagalo, who is commonly known arsenic Hemedti, has been seen by Burhan’s broadside successful galore of the post-coup meetings with planetary diplomats. He wields extended power successful the state aft starring brutal campaigns against the insurgency successful the restive Darfur state nether al-Bashir. His forces person besides been accused of violently dispersing a sit-in during the 2019 uprising that led to protester deaths.

Since the coup, large-scale demonstrations person taken spot astir the country, demanding the instrumentality of a civilian government.

Burhan besides said successful the interrogation with Al-Jazeera that the subject volition not halt “any governmental enactment arsenic agelong arsenic it is peaceful” and wrong the boundaries of the 2019 law declaration.

The papers was approved successful August 2019 aft months of drawn-out negotiations betwixt the subject and the protestation question that led to the uprising against al-Bashir. It established the now-deposed transitional authorities that includes a civilian-military Sovereign Council and a Cabinet, led by erstwhile U.N. economist Abdalla Hamdok, to tally day-to-day affairs.