Constitutional Federalism and the Sudanese State
by Hassan Issa Al-Taleb
The key phrase in the US intelligence report, as revealed in the documents released by its agencies, is the paragraph: “A homeland everyone is coveting,” referring to the future of Sudan after the coup on 17 November 1958, led by General Ibrahim Abboud.
This is precisely what happened after 65 years of American intelligence speculation about Sudan, represented by the rebellion on 15 April 2023 and the attempt to seize power by force, following the series of previous armed coups, according to the external client plan, except for mercenaries and external funding that did not lead to the decline of its predecessors.
The solution to managing the country lies in good governance, not in turning the capital into another province, as some may think, nor in beautifying the entrenched authoritarian structures. Sudan is a vast country covering approximately two million square kilometres, with a population of about half the population of the Federal Republic of Germany, which covers 16% of Sudan’s area.
Sudan needs a constitutional and democratic federal rule, allowing each regional group within its national territory to choose the laws that suit it, governed by its people through democratic elections, and choose its constitution through a general referendum of the people of each state, with the consent and wide consultation of the majority of its citizens. It has the right to choose its development priorities for its people according to economic data and available resources. According to this perspective, each capital of a federal state becomes the capital of the larger nation, as Khartoum was before its ordeal and as Port Sudan is today.
This is the best way to remove administrative marginalisation and political and developmental stupidity and to establish a democracy of power sharing.
Since the dual invasion in 1899, Sudan has been managed with centralised authority, the mentality of the colonial governor-general, Lord Cromer, the centrality of the central apparatus, the authority of the ruling party, and the mindset of “the boss” who leads the ship alone, without involving anyone in his decisions or determining the course of his path.
These terms have been used by history and surpassed by modern political, administrative, and civilisational systems. At the time, they were intended to consolidate colonial centralisation to serve the purposes of the coloniser and achieve dominance. But they have been practised in our beloved Sudan since January 1956 without attention to their contrary consequences. However, many experts in good governance and state administration and building consider them the worst way to manage, as they nurture tyrants and giants, and the individual ruler who tells his people, “I am your only leader.” The result is unbalanced development, widespread frustration, and administrative, economic, social, and security deterioration that Sudan is experiencing today. The overall economy has contracted by 20%, according to the Gross National Product (GNP) scale. Inflation has reached nearly 80%, after being around 382% in 2021, and the economic growth rate has remained negative since 2021 at a rate of (1.8%), while the population is increasing by 2.5%. The illiteracy rate among Sudanese in the 21st century is approximately 40%.
This is a harvested and condemned harvest of the practices of the central administration of the state that the rulers of Sudan have been engaged in for 125 years without contemplation or foresight.
The constitutional federal administration of the state is an innovative and tested idea that began to be practiced since the unification of the Emirates of Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century, following the repercussions of the decisions of the Vienna Conference in 1815 and its provision of a hundred years of continental peace and security enjoyed by Europe, which lasted until the outbreak of the First World War. It produced the administrative genius that adopted the strong German Confederation industrially, administratively, and militarily, which became one of the strongest countries in Europe during the First World War in 1914, prompting it to declare war against France, Russia, and Britain collectively, and occupy the Alsace and Lorraine region.
Perhaps adopting the federal democratic system in state administration is what enabled Germany to rise strong after two successive defeats in the two world wars, the first and then the second, after 1945. Then, it united with its eastern part in 1990 to become today the strongest economy in Europe and the second globally, with a per capita income of $54,000.
This German superiority is due to its administration through an open federal rule system comprising 16 states, allowing each state and region to develop politically, economically, and socially through decentralised developmental harmony, free planning, and democratic development within states and at the federal union level.
The federal constitutional administration addresses the problems of cultural, ethnic, and social diversity and economic marginalisation, allowing broader participation in power, fair distribution of resources, and promoting balanced development. Federal administration allows regional minorities the opportunity for partnership and representation through belonging to the larger nation through grassroots representation at political, administrative, and developmental levels. It enriches the Gross National Product (GNP) with distinguished and specialised contributions, whereby each state is characterised along the national mosaic geographical span.
Today, it is mandatory for Sudanese, after the experience of externally funded rebellion supported by mercenaries and foreign powers, to think outside the inherited colonial administrative box. They need to reconsider the experiences the other countries around us have gone through in the context of the international environment to build a new Sudan after the war. This must be a nation that expresses the aspirations and hopes of all Sudanese to overtake the strange and Westernised elites that are manufactured, imposed, and empowered by imported ideologies and agendas, and supported by foreign money and mercenaries.