Khartoum, January 26: Sudan’s former prime minister Sadiq al-Mahdi on Tuesday vowed to put an end to “totalitarianism” and resolve the conflict in Darfur by taking power at elections in April.
Mahdi, who was ousted 21 years ago in a military coup that brought President Omar al-Beshir to power, said victory for him in the presidential poll “would be a return to normal.”
“I have not been fired by the people, I have been fired by the guns. Now it is possible for the people to reinstate whom they believe represents their interest, represents aspirations,” he said in an English statement at a news conference.
“We think our programme is going to dismantle totalitarianism, is going to resolve all the problems of the peace agreements and create conditions for Sudan united on new principles or neighbourhood between two sisterly states,” he added.
The presidential, legislative and regional elections due to take place in April are a key element of a 2005 peace deal between Beshir’s government in the mostly Muslim north and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) in the largely Christian south that brought an end to a 22-year civil war.
Under the agreement, the south is to vote on an independence referendum in 2011.
Mahdi, 74, heads the influential Umma party and is spiritual leader of “Ansar,” a Sufi brotherhood that venerates the famous Mahdi who defeated British colonial forces under General Gordon in 1885.
Descended from Sudan’s legendary Islamist ruler, Sadiq al-Mahdi has held the premiership twice before, in 1966-67 when he was just 30, and again after his party won Sudan’s last multi-party elections in 1986.
Umma is the main opposition party in the north. Beshir heads the ruling National Congress Party (NCP).
The SPLM is a former southern rebel movement which has chosen as its presidential candidate Yasser Arman, a secular Muslim from north Sudan who made common cause with the grouping during the devastating civil war.
The death toll from ethnic violence over the past year in parts of the south surpassed that in the western region of Darfur, which has relatively stabilised since ethnic rebels took up arms against Khartoum in 2003.
Three-hundred thousand people were killed in that conflict, according to UN estimates. Beshir is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in the region.
—Agencies