Poor significance of "Vice President from Darfur"

By Gamal A Adam

November 16, 2009 — The theme of a “Vice President from Darfur” has been a recurring issue on Sudanese websites for the last few weeks. Different sources that have discussed the issue have underlined the fact that it emanated from the National Congress Party (NCP) during one of its recent meetings and that Omer Albashir has been serious in considering it. Some of these sources went as far as pointing out that the person who is expected to represent Darfur in that position will be a leading member of the Popular Congress Party because that might, according to these sources, be a suitable dowry with which the National Congress Party can remarry the Popular Congress Party after their divorce of 1999.

However, this discussion raises a number of questions. Notably: “Is the Sudanese Problem in Darfur resolvable by reconciliation between the National Congress Party and the Popular Congress party through the position of Vice President? Has the Darfur problem only come to the fore as a result of conflict over positions between northern and western Sudanese in National Islamic Front (NIF) before 1999? Since when was the NIF representative of Darfur to the point that its reestablishment will automatically lead to the resolution of the region’s problems? If the position of Vice President was really the solution to the problems of marginalized regions in Sudan why has the position of First Vice President not solved the problem of Southern Sudan? And can even the position of President from a marginalized region solve the problem of Darfur, Southern Sudan or Eastern Sudan while the Sudanese state continues to be like a corporate enterprise run by individuals from the arbized-Nubian tribes of Ja’alyeen, Shaiguia and Danagla?

Those who think that the Darfur problem is resolvable through the creation of new positions are deliberately misinterpreting the problem of the region. These include the social, economic and education destruction specialists in National Congress Party and their puppets from Darfur whose main functions include the occupation of lower ranks in that party, patronage positions invented for them and surveillance against innocent Darfuris. My focus in the following pages is on those who have transformed the country into a tribal enterprise and who are now marketing the position of vice president for the Darfur cause. Read more >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>