There is a political vacuum on the civilian side. The SPA, a coalition of trade unions spearheading the protests, has no single leader
the protesters in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, is to be caught up in an intoxicating scene. Students, cheeks painted with Sudanese flags, march past, singing revolutionary songs. As their noise subsides so others rise: the rhymes of passing street poets, the speeches of firebrands atop makeshift stages. All around friends grab each other for selfies, recording for history their role in ending three decades of dictatorship. They may call it a sit-in, but here nothing is still.
It was the protesters’ sustained energy over several months that led to the ousting of Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s president since 1989, on April 11th. The next day they forced his successor, Awad Ibn Auf, to step down as well. Today the street is calling for the “third fall”, that of the ten-member Transitional Military Council , which is in charge of the country. “We have to keep applying the pressure,” says Abuzar Awad, a 31-year-old engineer. “Otherwise the military won’t give us our rights.
The junta has much to lose. An estimated 65%-70% of state spending goes on security, compared with just 5% for public health and education. Families connected to the military and security services run the businesses that dominate the Sudanese economy. Corruption is rife.cling on. On April 21st Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates gave Sudan $3bn worth of aid, including $500m in cash deposited at the central bank—a lifeline in an inflationary economy short of hard currency.
Sudanese youth are the vanguard of the protest movement, but this is not a juvenile revolt. Their parents are behind them. Abd Elazim Muhammad Kheir, a 65-year-old businessman, spent 21 years working at the Sudanese central bank. “All of the old regime are completely corrupt; if you’re not corrupt you cannot stay in office,” he says. “But the kids are not accepting it.”
His 15-year-old son, Aamin, and 23-year-old daughter, Roan, have gone to the sit-in almost every day. Roan came back from Manchester, England, to join her peers. “I told them they will be killed, but they are willing to die for their country,” says Mr Kheir, with a mixture of fatherly pride and concern. Now he goes to the protests too. “To build a new society we have to sacrifice,” he says.
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