WASHINGTON - Sudan’s prime minister has
replaced his finance, energy and health ministers and four other
cabinet-level officials in response to growing public demands for
sweeping reforms.
The government said in a statement Thursday that Prime Minister
Abdalla Hamdok had fired Health Minister Akram Altom and accepted the
resignations of six other ministers. No reasons were given for the
removal of any particular minister.
Protests precede changes
Suleiman Baldo, a senior policy analyst at the Sentry, a
Washington-based organization that tries to expose government corruption
linked to African wars, told South Sudan in Focus the reshuffle was not
unexpected, as it followed nationwide protests in which citizens
demanded the transitional government implement economic reforms and hold
former officials accountable for crimes.
"There’s a lot of popular frustration with delays in carrying out the agendas of the transition, noticeably in the area of justice and economic reforms to alleviate the very severe economic crisis and the crushing burden that the economic crisis is causing to people’s livelihoods and the dwindling of their incomes due to the crisis,” Baldo said.
Hamdok runs a power-sharing government of civilian technocrats and
military officials, many of whom were allied with ousted President Omar
al-Bashir.
The transitional cabinet was appointed in August and September 2019 after Bashir’s ouster in April.
Although Sudan’s constitutional document grants broad powers to the prime minister and his Cabinet, economic reforms are needed now, not later, Baldo said.
"I believe that the slowness in deploying these extensive executive
powers is what frustrated people, including observers and analysts such
as myself, in the sense that you could see that the Cabinet is not using
the full extent of the constitutional powers that were granted to it,
and therefore there was an objective reason to carry out this change,”
Baldo told VOA.
Surprise firing
Few had anticipated the firing of Ibrahim Albadawi, who steered
efforts to stabilize Sudan’s struggling economy and worked with foreign
donors as finance minister.
Hamdok named Hiba Mohamed Ali as caretaker minister. Baldo said the
change would do little to relieve the dire economic straits the country
is facing.
"Hiba Mohamed Ali was the right arm of former Minister Badawi, in the
sense that she was in charge of several policies that the ministry was
pursuing and overseeing the implementation of many of these policies and
therefore she is no stranger to the policy line,” Baldo said.
Even though U.S. sanctions on Sudan were lifted in October 2017,
which brightened expectations among many that the economy would improve,
Sudan’s economic situation continues to deteriorate. According to the
transitional government, the inflation rate has reached 64% this year.
Financial experts say it could be closer to 100%.
Costs of basics on rise
The prices of basic commodities like fuel and food have more than
doubled since last year, and the Sudanese pound has depreciated
threefold against the U.S. dollar in the same time period.
To achieve meaningful reforms, Hamdok should use his executive power
to bring the army and other Sudanese military forces under the Cabinet’s
control, Baldo said.
"We do have a Cabinet that has full executive powers, but the real
powers in terms of physical power, in terms of the control of weapons
and the control of money, is in the hands of the security sector
institutions of the army, the police and the rapid support forces, in
addition to the general intelligence services,” Baldo told VOA.
Hamdok told Sudanese in a televised address on the eve of nationwide rallies June 30 that his government would respond to demonstrators’ demands for peace, faster economic reform, and justice for the hundreds of people killed and injured during protests to topple Bashir. One person was killed and several others were injured during the demonstrations held just over a week ago.
Carol Van Dam Falk contributed to this report.
VOA