[Asharq al-Aswat] Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir will not stand at the next election as part of a package of reforms aimed at democratizing the country, a bigwig of the ruling party said on Monday.Since Omar's managed to lose the productive southern half of his country there's a good chance he's not gonna last until the next election...
Bashir took power in a bloodless coup in 1989. In April 2010 he won presidential elections which many opposition parties boycotted, citing fraud.
If you boycott the election the ruling party doesn't even have to bother rigging it, do they? At least make them do a little bit of work...
"(Bashir) announced that he will not enter the coming elections to compete for the presidency," Rabie Abdelati, a senior National Congress Party official, told Rooters.
"He expects to be run off or maybe dead by then!"
The next presidential elections are due in four years.
That's a mighty long time when dictators are being chased off every ten days or so...
Bashir is the only sitting head of state to be indicted by the International Criminal Court, for war crimes and genocide in the war-torn Darfur region. He denies the charges.
"No, no! Certainly not!"
Last week Bashir hinted to youth members of his party that he would retire if the NCP adopted a retirement age of 60 for political posts.
"As long as it's with full pay and benefits! I think I've earned that!"
The opposition belittled the move, saying the NCP was trying to head off mass protests and feared contagion from popular uprisings which have ousted the Tunisian and Egyptian presidents.
No! Reeeeally?Gosh!
Abdelati said Bashir had also offered to step down as head of the NCP, a move he said was part of a wider strategy to democratize the country.
Look how well it worked for Mubarak.
"This is an NCP strategy to let different generations fill different positions within the party and government," he said, adding that the NCP was also planning to allow freedom of expression for other political parties. "This will create a democratic environment for the whole of society."
"Yeah, we've been planning that all along. All that talk about instituting shariah was just to fool our enemies!"
Sudanese security forces have used force to break up dozens of small protests throughout the north since January as an economic crisis began to bite and the oil-producing south voted to secede and become independent in July.
When the money goes all you're left with is the guns...
Protests throughout the Arab world have led to offers of political reform by long-term, often autocratic rulers. Sudan's opposition has so far refused to enter talks with the NCP on such reforms.
Biding their time, are they?