African leaders have reportedly agreed to give Sudan’s ruling military council three months time to implement democratic reforms. The announcement followed a meeting held in Cairo on Tuesday, reported Africa News.
Egypt’s Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who is also the Chairperson of the African Union, attended the meeting in Cairo along with Ethiopia’s deputy prime minister, head of African Union Commission, leaders of Chad, Djibouti, Somalia, South Africa, and presidential envoys of Kenya, Nigeria, South Sudan, and Uganda.
The time extension comes as a relief to Sudan’s Transitional Military Council (TMC) that was allotted a 15-day deadline by the African Union last week to hand over power to civilians or to be suspended from the grouping. The military council took over after President Omar al-Bashir was ousted on April 11.
The suspension of Sudan’s AU membership is likely to affect the military council’s efforts to get international recognition as the country’s legitimate rulers during an interim period of up to two years, and even delay in any aid to the country.
The demonstrators have been creating continuous pressure on the military council to hand power rapidly to civilians since the military ousted Bashir after months of mass protests against his 30 years in office.
While addressing the summit, Sisi said that the meeting agreed on the need to deal with the situation in Sudan by working to “quickly restore the constitutional system through a political democratic process led and managed by the Sudanese themselves”.
The meeting ended with the attendees appealing the Sudanese authorities to work together with the military forces in good faith to address Sudan’s current political situation and to speed up the constitutional regime’s reestablishment.
The statement released after the meeting said that democratic political dialogue should be owned and led by the Sudanese themselves, including all Sudanese parties including the armed movements.
