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12 April 2009 Khartoum - Islamist opposition
leader Hassan al-Turabi said on Saturday that he is
unwilling to stand as a presidential candidate against
Omar al-Bashir, who is defying an international
warrant for his arrest.
Turabi's Popular Congress party called for a
government of national unity to prepare the country
for elections scheduled for February next year.
People aged "60, 70 or 77 like myself, they have
children who can become president. My son is now 40
years, and then you have even grandchildren who can
join the parliament. So it is better to leave it for
other generations," he told reporters at party
headquarters.
"It is better to present new people, a new generation
for new times. If you are a very wise person you sit
back and write books that guide us, that inspire us,
or lecture to us... but don't put yourself forward. I
don't have that much energy," Turabi said on the
sidelines of a news conference.
Sudan's electoral commission announced last week that
presidential, parliamentary and regional elections
will be held in February 2010 - the first proper
elections in Africa's largest country since 1986.
Turabi is a former mentor of Bashir, having backed him
when he toppled a three-year-old democratically
elected government in a bloodless coup in June 1989.
Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court
for alleged crimes committed during the six-year
conflict in the western Darfur region.
The accusations include murder, extermination,
forcible transfer, torture, rape and two counts of war
crimes: attacks against civilians and pillaging.
The Popular Congress party has yet to say if it will
contest the elections and if so who its presidential
candidate will be.
But on Saturday it released a plan for a "transitional
government" to settle "pending crises" and "prepare
the country for elections."
The party held out an olive branch to political groups
in Darfur by suggesting that a vice-president of Sudan
should be appointed from the region.
"He is to be chosen by the consensus of the people of
Darfur in the armed resistance and others, or
immediately elected if consensus cannot be reached,"
the party said. |
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