Frustrated by the political crisis in the two-year-old transition in Sudan, a crowd of demonstrators gathered in front of the presidential palace in Khartoum on Saturday calling for the military to seize power.
Since the ouster of President Omar al-Bashir in 2019, an uneasy political alliance for power sharing, Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC), was forged between the military and civilian groups.
However, the Sudanese military leadership has demanded reforms in the FFC cabinet, drawing support from forces loyal to Bashir, and who are suspected to have enabled a failed coup attempt in September.
Civilian leaders, however, have accused them of aiming for a power grab.
Chanting “down with the hunger government,” the protesters called for General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the armed forces and Sudan’s joint military-civilian Sovereign Council, to initiate a coup and overthrow the government.
The protesters, who got close enough to the gates of the presidential palace, with minimal resistance, were later to clash with pro-civilian protesters.
Khartoum State governor Ayman Khalid said an unidentified armed group removed security barriers around government buildings and prevented the police and security forces from preparing for the march.
The civilian Prime Minister, Abdalla Hamdok, had in a speech, Friday, presented a roadmap out of the crisis and warned that failure to find a resolution would throw the country’s future “to the wind.”
