The Sudanese government and Sovereign Council on Friday enacted a new legislation dissolving the country’s former ruling party, the National Congress Party, and also outlawed the Public Order Law that had infringed on the rights of many citizens, especially women.
“The endorsement of the two laws came in fulfilment of the revolution’s slogans in freedom, peace and justice,” Mohamed Al-Faki Suleiman, a spokesman of the Sovereign Council said in a statement after the joint meeting held for the first time with the Council of Ministers ended early Friday.
On Wednesday, local Sudanese media reported that the NCP had warned against any move to dissolve it or prevent it from exercising its political and legal rights.
But despite the NCP threat, the two powerful bodies which currently operate using executive and legislative powers due to the non-constitution of a transitional parliament yet agreed to endorse the “law for dismantling the June 30th regime and removing empowerment” which is concerned with dissolving the NCP and confiscating its properties and the “law for cancelling the public order law.”
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Sudan’s Justice Minister, Nasredeen Abdelbari, after the meeting, stated that “the law for dismantling the NCP comes in implementation of the constitutional document and it directly dissolves the NCP and seizes the party’s properties, money and affiliates to be affiliated to the Federal Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning.”
Abdelbari said the law stipulates the establishment of an 18-member committee to be tasked with instructing the concerned authorities to dissolve any government or partisan body, organization, union, commission, company or partisan arm that belongs to the June 30th regime and end the service of its personnel.
The constitutional declaration, previously approved by the sovereign council and the cabinet, stipulates that the council and the cabinet have the right to pass laws until the transitional parliament is established.
NCP is Sudan’s oldest party
The NCP, under former President Omar al-Bashir, had ruled Sudan for 30 years since 1989 until the Sudanese army ousted the government and party on April 11 amid popular protests that erupted in December last year. It is the successor organization to the Brotherhood-affiliated National Islamic Front (NIF).
Long steeped in controversy, the NCP and its precursors have associated themselves with such notorious terrorists as Osama bin Laden and a variety of extremist groups including al-Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah.
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Although formally registered as a political party, NCP precursors have at times embraced genocidal violence against the country’s non-Muslims to advance their Islamist agenda.
Former President, al-Bashir was NCP chairman. He is currently on trial locally for corruption and stands accused at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide for his violence against religious and ethnic groups throughout Sudan.
While strongly criticized by the opposition for its domestic policies, especially its harsh reaction to the rebellion in Darfur, the NCP has been widely credited for settling the second civil war in the South through an agreement in 2005.
In the 2010 general elections, which were boycotted by some major parties, the NCP won 324 out of 450 seats in the national parliament and majorities in all the state assemblies.
While the polls were criticized by observers for legal and administrative flaws, many analysts agree that the result did represent more or less the extent to which the NCP enjoys popular support, especially in the centre of the country.
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After the secession of the South, the NCP also included the DUP and some smaller parties in the government.