MONGABAY.COM
Mongabay.com seeks to raise interest in and appreciation of wild lands and wildlife, while examining the impact of emerging trends in climate, technology, economics, and finance on conservation and development (more)
WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
|
|
Sudan
Index
One of the first acts of the RCC-NS after seizing power was
to abolish by decree the transitional Constitution of 1985,
drafted following the overthrow of the Nimeiri government to
replace the 1973 Permanent Constitution. Bashir and other RCC-NS
members initially promised that a constituent assembly would be
convened to draw up a new constitution. During its first eighteen
months, however, the RCC-NS government failed to address the
issue of a constitution. Then in early 1991, in response to
increasing criticism of its authoritarian and arbitrary rule, the
RCC-NS announced the convening of a constitutional conference.
Bashir invited civilian politicians, including those opposed to
the government, to attend the conference and discuss without fear
of reprisal legal procedures that might be set forth in a
constitutional document. Although representatives of some banned
political parties attended the constitutional conference in
April, the conclave's lack of an electoral mandate, its
government sponsorship, and a boycott by major opposition groups
served to undermine the legitimacy of its deliberations.
The 1991 constitutional conference necessarily labored under
a heavy historical legacy: drawing up a constitution acceptable
to all elements of the country's diverse population has been an
intractable political problem since Sudan became independent in
1956 with a temporary constitution known as the Transitional
Constitution. The primary reason for this situation has been the
inability of the country's major religious groups, the majority
Muslims and the minority non-Muslims, to agree on the role of the
sharia, or Islamic law. Islamic political groups, led by the
Muslim Brotherhood, have insisted that any constitution must be
based on the sharia. The non-Muslims have been equally insistent
that the country must have a secular constitution. Despite the
convening over the years of numerous committees, conferences, and
constituent assemblies to discuss or draft a constitution, most
Muslim and non-Muslim political leaders refused to compromise
their views about the role of the sharia. The unresolved
constitutional issue remained one of the major sources of
disaffection in the predominantly non-Muslim south, where deepseated fears of Islamization have been reinforced by the
government's Islamic education policies during the Ibrahim Abbud
military dictatorship (1958-64), Nimeiri's September 1983
introduction of the Islamic sharia by decree, and the failure
since 1985 to remove the sharia as the basis of the legal system.
Data as of June 1991
|
|