The long-awaited speech President Omar Al Bashir delivered in the Friendship Hall in Khartoum on Monday evening received much criticism from the opposition parties who were invited to attend.<\/p>\n
The Popular Congress Party (PCP), led by Dr Hassan El Turabi, expressed its regret having accepted the invitation to attend the speech at the Friendship Hall. Kamal Omar Abdel Salam, the Secretary of the PCP, told Radio Dabanga that he and his party’s leader El Turabi, accepted to attend because of \u201cleaked information\u201d, saying that the President would announce major changes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was possible, after the surprising reshuffle of the cabinet in December last year. We were expecting major announcements, like a return of freedom of speech, a transitional governing period, and a stoppage of the wars in the country. Yet, at the time the President was giving his speech, the Sudanese Air Force was bombing Kauda in South Kordofan, the Blue Nile, and Jebel Marra in Darfur.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Empty speech\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Abdel Salam concluded that the \u201cempty speech\u201d was a blow for all who expected that the President could make a difference. \u201cWe have no choice anymore but to overthrow this regime by a popular uprising.\u201d<\/p>\n The PCP Secretary strongly denied the rumour that the attendance of El Turabi and National Umma Party (NUP leader Sadig El Mahdi was the result of a secret agreement with Al Bashir. \u201cIf there was something secretly planned, it was the President\u2019s shamelessness in speaking about freedoms in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n The president of the Sudanese Communist Party, Sadig Yusif, pointed to the four issues the President tackled in his speech: peace, freedoms, economy, and identity. \u201cAl Bashir is the first and main cause of the absence of peace, freedoms, a dying economy and an identity policy based on discrimination.\u201d So the only solution for these issues is to \u201cget rid of this regime\u201d.<\/p>\n Sara Nugdallah, the chairman of the NUP Political Bureau, considered the \u201cdisregard for the Sudanese people, the country and all its values\u201d in Al Bashir\u2019s speech as \u201cvery frustrating, to the extent it surely angered many of his followers,” she said. \u201cThe speech itself was incomprehensible.\u201d<\/p>\n The NUP issued a statement on Tuesday morning (today) saying that \u201cThe current state of the country does not allow generalities and an invitation to dialogues in the future. The current state requires drastic and specific measures leading to a new governance system. The state of the nation should be addressed, not the state of the ruling party\u201d.<\/p>\n File photo: Al Bashir greets El Turabi after his speech in the Friendship Hall in Khartoum (Alarabiya)<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n