Hamdok, Jibril, and Jadeen: Show Your Cards
In the game of damma, skilled players use a cunning manoeuvre called ‘locking’ the game. One player places a piece that closes all paths for the other competitors. The game ends, and each player is asked to reveal a piece on the board so the winner and loser can be known from the pieces left after they are exposed.
This is what is happening in damma. To discover who is defeated and who is victorious in our play with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the people will lock the game. Hamdok, Jibril, and Jadeen must place their cards on the table so we can understand our position.
The minister of energy spoke at length yesterday’s press conference, and the minister of finance, Jibril, spoke even more. They exhausted us with expressions such as major surgery on the economy, amputating the diseased limb, removing the cancerous tumour from the body of the economy, and so on.
These are phrases we have memorised by heart without any real action in the harsh reality of Sudan’s economy. They are ornamental words that neither nourish nor relieve hunger and, at many moments, delirium without meaning. They did not speak in figures, although economics is a science based primarily on numbers.
At a press conference attended by the two most important figures in people’s livelihoods, they failed to convince us with numbers and relied on polished emotional language about the comfort and prosperity awaiting us if we endure their deep surgery on this exhausted body.
The logical question is: why were the figures absent from this important press conference? The most logical answer is that they do not know, possess, or understand any figures, and do not know where we are being led. They are applying the World Bank’s prescription exactly as written, without blinking.
This people has been patient for a long time and is prepared to continue being patient if it becomes certain that this patience will lead to economic stability and a guaranteed minimum of decent living. That guarantee will not come from ornamental speeches. We want realistic economic figures and facts, not illusions and fabrications.
You might say that freeing fuel prices will save the state a certain number of billions each year; those billions will be spent on building a certain number of hospitals and primary schools, and we will establish a certain number of thermal power stations. After one, two, or three years, we will provide a stable electricity supply without cuts.
That is a clear work programme with specific figures and dates, presented to the people and printed in small booklets that every Sudanese person can carry in his pocket, so that everyone can participate in building the homeland from his own position. Only then can you be sure that a hungry people’s revolution will not erupt, burn the living and the dead, and burn you—the rulers—before it burns the entire country.
It is impossible to ask a worker or employee to stand with you to build the homeland when the salary you give him at the end of each month does not even cover transportation to and from his workplace. How will he live, educate his children, feed them, and treat them? Is there no wise man among you, rulers of revolutionary neglect?
I remember that in his first televised interview, Prime Minister Hamdok said they would apply the World Bank’s prescription with purely modern Sudanese specifications. It was warmly welcomed by everyone, and he gave examples from countries such as Vietnam and several African states. Sadly, he and the ministers of the economic sector broke that promise, tied the Sudanese citizen tightly, and threw him into the World Bank’s sea while standing on the shore shouting: ‘Do not get wet, Sudanese citizen.’
My final appeal to Hamdok, Jibril, and Jadeen is this: show your cards and tell us what you are doing with this country’s economy, away from ornamental talk, or expect the hungry people’s revolution to swallow you and swallow what remains of a country once called Sudan.
I have delivered my message; bear witness, my Lord.
May God help us.