Opposition group NCF renews vow to topple Sudan’s government

Sudan’s opposition umbrella group, the National Consensus Forces (NCF), has renewed its commitment to overthrow the Sudanese government by political, democratic and peaceful means, the group said in a statement yesterday.

According to the website Sudan Tribune, the NCF led by Farouk Abu Issa, a former foreign minister, said:

[it] adheres to overthrow the regime as the only option to achieve the people’s legitimate aspirations for freedom, democracy, peace, justice, unity and progress.

The group was originally formed in 2010 to challenge the ruling National Congress party but re-emerged in 2014 after the beginning of the national dialogue progress. It called on opposition groups to work together to remove the government through peaceful and democratic political means. It renewed its rejection of the national dialogue process which it said had “failed to bring peace, democratic transformation and real progress”.

The statement also pointed out that Sudan’s government had surrendered to the United States’ political, security and economic agenda, which the group felt was against the interest of ordinary Sudanese citizens wanting to achieve unity, freedom and progress.

We must expose the international and regional plans in Sudan, which seek to subjugate the countries of the region by weakening and fragmenting them.

The NCF, which gathers mainly centre-left and leftist parties refused to join the peace process but wants to include rebel groups in talks, to grant greater political freedoms and has asked the government to free political detainees and prisoners.

The group’s 83-year leader, Farrouk Abu Issa, Sudan’s foreign minister from 1967-1971, was arrested in December 2014 and charged with undermining the constitutional system after he signed a political charter calling for the peace process to include armed rebel groups. He renewed his call to overthrow the government after being released in April 2015.

Abu Issa’s NCF is also part of the “Sudan Call” group which includes the outlawed Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF), an alliance of armed opposition groups, and the National Umma Party (NUP) led by the former Prime Minister Sadiq Al-Mahdi.