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Sudan Tribune

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Sudan’s NCP eying structural changes before 2015 elections: official

July 14, 2013 (KHARTOUM) – A leading figure in Sudan’s ruling National Congress Part (NCP) has announced that the party plans to overhaul its structures prior to general elections in 2015.

NCP logo
NCP logo
The head of the parliamentary subcommittee on foreign affairs, security and defense, Mohamed al-Hassan al-Amin, said in press statements that rapprochement between the NCP and the opposition Popular Congress Party (PCP) in the future is not unlikely, pointing that they share the same ideology.

The PCP split from the NCP following 1999’s bitter power struggle between president Omer Hassan al-Bashir and the Islamist leader Hassan Al-Turabi. The latter was ousted from his post as parliament speaker.

Al-Turabi afterwards established the PCP and has since been a vociferous critic of the very regime whose army-backed seizure of power in 1989 he orchestrated.

The NCP official went on to say that their main difference with the PCP were on strategy not the fundamental orientation, stressing that senior leaders in both parties will assume advisory rather than executive roles.

Al-Amin said that regional and international situation forces the NCP to stick to the principles not the individuals, ruling out that convergence between the two parties was motivated by the recent developments in Egypt.

“It is true that we both [the NCP and the PCP] sympathize with the general Islamic orientation, but this does not mean that we are heading in the same direction. We hope that the two parties come together”, said Al-Amin

He strongly denied NCP’s exclusion of political forces except those who refused dialogue.

Last April, Bashir renewed his call for opposition parties and armed groups to engage in a national dialogue on drafting a new constitution.

But the opposition insists that it would not take part in a national dialogue conference unless the ruling NCP agrees to leave power and to form interim institutions.

(ST)

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