What Bashir’s exit means for region’s ageing strongmen

Former Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

The ouster of Sudan’s long-serving President Omar Hassan al-Bashir from power on Thursday could lead to confusion and more chaos if not cautiously handled.

The power of the people that brought down one of the longest serving despots in Africa is likely to send shivers throughout the rest of the Eastern and Horn of Africa region, whose people have been buckling under the misrule of strongmen, rigged elections and dwindling standard of living.

People’s power

It has now become apparent that people’s power can topple a strongman who until days ago appeared to weather the most potent uprising against his 30-year rule. 

Now that Bashir is gone, Sudan is facing the reality after revolution: Chaos or democracy.

The whereabouts of Bashir, who has been in power for 30 years, is only known to the military’s top brass who overthrew him and seized power.

His fate was sealed last year when his government tripled bread prices in a country that was already suffering from dire economic crisis. After South Sudan broke away from Sudan and became an independent nation, Khartoum lost about 80 per cent of its oil revenue, ending a golden period in which the North had thrived at the expense of the South.

Although each country in the region has its own dynamics that determine the public’s response to its leaders’ abuses and mismanagement, many of the problems that brought the Sudanese to the streets -- youth unemployment, high food prices, corruption and dictatorship -- exist in the region’snations.

When on December 19 last year, protesters chanting “No to hunger” marched through the streets in the northeastern town of Atbara in River Nile state -- and the protests quickly spread to the capital, Khartoum -- the response of Bashir’s security apparatus was a textbook example of dictators’ reaction: batons, tear gas, rubber bullets and live bullets.

But that didn’t deter protesters whose number swelled by the day until they succeed in staging a bold sit-in in front of the army’s headquarters in the capital, a development that finally meant the four-month-long protests had reached a tipping point.

The military finally decided to remove Bashir on Thursday, drawing the curtain on his dictatorship. It dissolved the government, suspended the constitution, declared a state of emergency for three months and imposed a curfew. Protestors swiftly rejected the takeover by the military, which said it would rule the country for two years.

Late on Thursday, Sudanese Professionals Association, or SPA, called on all the demonstrators “to go and gather now in the courtyard of the sit-in and stay there.”

On Friday, defying the curfew, thousands of Sudanese heeded that call and congregated outside the defense ministry, vowing to press for a civilian-led government.

Yesterday, the military leaders sought to reassure people that their only concern is public order.

A spokesman said Sudan’s future would be decided by the protesters who took to the streets to demand President Omar al-Bashir’s removal. But protesters remain camped out in the streets of Khartoum, fearing the coup leaders are too close to Mr Bashir.

Uncertainty and unease

The uncertainty in Sudan, however, will only add to the uneasiness obtaining in the region. Martin Elia Lomoro Sudan, South Sudan’s Cabinet affairs minister, said Thursday that his country was monitoring events in Khartoum. “Our concern is genuine, strong,” he said.

The rest of the region also has a reason to closely follow developments in Sudan.

Neighbouring Ethiopia, whose people also succeeded in edging out the repressive rule of the minority Tigrayan ethnic group last year, has been grappling with internal conflicts that displaced millions and is threatening to tear Africa’s second largest nation apart.

If lawlessness erupts in Sudan, it will have a direct bearing on Ethiopia, which hosts tens of thousands of refugees from its neighbors.

The strongmen in Uganda, Rwanda, Djibouti and Eritrea, who have been in power for decades would be wary of any whiff of danger to their grip on power.

Uganda’s President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, who has been in power since 1986, is eyeing the 2021 presidential election, his sixth-term run, after a Ugandan court upheld a constitutional change that removed presidential age limits.

The three most crucial questions many analysts are asking are: Will Bashir’s exit have a ripple effect on the region? Will Sudan, which already has several running internal conflicts, stick together as a united nation or disintegrate and collapse into chaos? Will the region’s opposition groups be inspired by the uprising and rise up against their countries’ dictators?

“It’s a fifty-fifty possibility,” Mwambutsya Ndebesa, a senior lecturer in history at Makerere University in Uganda told Saturday Standard by phone.

“If Sudan degenerates into chaos and terrorists find a foothold there, the West will look the other way and support President Museveni to stop terror from spreading into the south.”