Sudan’s new prime minister on Thursday unveiled the first Cabinet since the overthrow of former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, a major step in the country’s hard-won transition to civilian rule after decades of authoritarianism.
The announcement had been delayed for days as Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok mulled over the nominees proposed by the movement that led the months-long protests against al-Bashir and also the generals who ousted him.
The 18-member Cabinet includes four women, including the country’s first-ever female foreign affairs minister, Asma Mohamed Abdalla, Hamdok told a news conference.
“Today we begin a new era,” Hamdok said. “The top priority of the transition government is to end the war and build sustainable peace.”
Hamdok named Ibrahim Ahmed El-Badawi as minister of finance and economic planning, army Lieutenant General Jamal Omar as defense minister and police Lieutenant General El-Trafi Idris Dafallah as minister of interior.
“Now we have a great chance to achieve peace, as we have a suitable environment for that,” Hamdok said.
It was a worsening economic crisis that triggered the fall of al-Bashir, who was later arrested and is on trial on charges of illegal acquisition and use of foreign funds.
The protests that eventually brought him down were ignited late last year by his government’s decision to triple the price of bread. The demonstrations swiftly mushroomed into a nationwide protest movement against his three-decade rule, finally leading to his ouster in April.
However, the generals who ousted him resisted a swift handover of power to civilians.
In response, protesters kept up the pressure against them, leading to a power-sharing deal signed last month between the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC) protest movement and the generals.
Doctors linked to the FFC have said that more than 250 people have been killed in protest-related violence since December last year, including at least 127 in early June during a brutal crackdown on a weeks-long protest sit-in outside the military headquarters in Khartoum.
The Cabinet is expected to steer the daily affairs of the country during a transition period of 39 months.
On Tuesday, Hamdok, who built a career in international organizations, most recently as deputy executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa in Addis Ababa, said that the delay in forming the Cabinet was due to the “gender balance” he had been trying to achieve.
He said that he also wanted to ensure that the Cabinet represented all the regions of the country.
Last month, Sudan swore in a “sovereign council,” a joint civilian-military ruling body that aims to oversee the transition.
The council is the result of the power-sharing deal between the protesters and generals who seized power after the army ousted al-Bashir.
The deal stipulates a legislative body should be formed within 90 days of its signing. The legislature should include no more than 300 members, with 201 seats allotted to the FFC.
Hamdok, who was nominated by the protest movement, had previously said that he would choose technocrats based on their “competence” to lead Sudan through formidable challenges that also include ending internal conflicts.
Sudan’s power-sharing deal aims to forge peace with armed groups.
Rebel groups from marginalized regions, including Darfur, Blue Nile and South Kordofan state, waged long wars against al-Bashir’s forces.
Hamdok’s Cabinet would also be expected to fight corruption and dismantle the long-entrenched Muslim deep state created under al-Bashir.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.