Will Sudan’s military junta really hand over power to civilian authority under a supposedly ground-breaking pact signed between military leaders and civilian protesters?

The agreement between the Transitional Military Council (TMC) which is now running Sudan and the Forces for Freedom and Change (FCC) coalition of civilian protesters who have been holding mass demonstrations demanding civilian rule for months, has been widely hailed.

Protesters poured on to the streets of Khartoum to welcome the agreement, chanting “civilian, civilian, civilian”.

The agreement signed on 5 July ended persistent mass protests against the junta in the streets of the capital Khartoum and other cities which began in December and which had led to the deaths of scores of demonstrators.

Under the deal, the military council is supposed to transfer power to a sovereign council which will have six civilian members and five military members. However, for the first 21 months of its existence, the sovereign council is to be chaired by a military officer.

For the next 18 months, it is to be chaired by a civilian, after which elections will be held for a conventional civilian government.

However many Sudan-watchers have concerns about the agreement. Ostensibly it meets the main demand by the Sudanese protesters, the African Union and most of the international community, for the military to transfer power to a transitional civilian authority. That’s because, on the face of it, the sovereign council will have a majority of civilian members — six civilians versus five military members.

However, in practice, the council will have five members from each side with an 11th member who will be a civilian — in order to be able to say the sovereign council will be a civilian authority.

But the 11th member will have to be someone who is acceptable to the military council.

This could mean that the fight which had raged between the military council and the FCC protesters for months over which side should control the transition might simply now be transferred to the negotiations over who the 11th member of the sovereign council should be.

There are suggestions that this person would have to be an ex-military officer, in order to be acceptable to the military council.

There are still many other gaps in understanding the powers of the sovereign council. Negotiations between lawyers from both sides over the precise wording of the agreement should clarify some gaps. These negotiations were expected to conclude more than a week ago, but are still dragging on, suggesting serious disagreements.

It is possible these relate to the official inquiry into the government’s killing of about 100 protesters in Khartoum on 3 June which came close to scuppering the negotiations completely.

But even if the final text does throw light on where real power will lie during the transition, it might only become fully clear once the sovereign council has begun operating.

One reason the drift of the agreement was assumed to be towards civilian rule was that both sides originally agreed that the Council of Ministers that is to manage the day-to-day running of Sudan during the transition was to be a cabinet of civilian technocrats not identified with any political party or the military.

That is now under debate as the military is demanding that the sovereign council should have a veto over these cabinet appointments.

This has reinforced the suspicion that once the sovereign council and the Council of Ministers/cabinet have been appointed, the sovereign council will try to interfere in the day-to-day running of the cabinet.

All of these doubts raise the important question of whether a handover of power from the present TMC to this sovereign council will really be a handover to a civilian authority. Whether the sovereign council can truly be characterised as a civilian body remains in doubt.

That, of course, is the crucial question since the handover to civilian government was the central demand which kept the protesters on the streets for months. It also remains the demand of the African Union Peace and Security Council which suspended Sudan from its ranks in April because the military had ousted civilian President Omar al-Bashir.

Revealingly, the AU Peace and Security Council has not changed its stance since the 5 July agreement was signed, suggesting it also has its doubts. One FFC party, the communists, has also pulled out of the deal.

A real handover to a civilian transitional government is also the requirement of Sudan’s traditional donor partners before they will provide financial and economic support.

There are also some concerns that the military might entrench itself so firmly in power during its first 21 months chairing the sovereign council, that it will not hand over the chair to a civilian for the remainder of the transition.

Apart from the sovereign council and the cabinet, the third element of the transitional government should be a legislative council. Originally the idea had been that it should favour the protesters of the FFC, but because of disagreement over that, its establishment had been shelved for three months.

Many believe the FFC had signed up to the deal despite all these concerns because it FFC realised its bargaining power was growing ever weaker compared to that of the military.

This was partly because Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were supporting the military council — even though it seems they pulled back a little in their support from the military council and encouraged the military to do a deal.

Analysts believe the UAE, in particular, had begun to have misgivings about its support for the military council (especially after the 3 June military crackdown). The UAE may have been especially embarrassed by that slaughter because it was particularly supporting the highly controversial deputy leader of the military council, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo — popularly known as Hemeti — who commands the Rapid Support Forces, formerly the janjaweed militias who have been blamed for the 3 June killings and many of other atrocities against protesters.

Another critical reason for the acceptance of last week’s agreement by the FFC protesters and — at least so far — most of the international community was because they all felt it had reduced the potential for further flare-ups of violence by the military against the civilian protesters.

Apart from the central FFC-TMC stand-off, many outstanding questions remain about the extent of participation by Sudan’s armed groups in the agreed transitional process — and therefore how likely it is to address wider sources of conflict in the country. Though most of the armed groups had participated in the negotiations under the umbrella of the Sudan Call coalition which was part of the FFC, some had rejected the agreement and were critical of the FFC for signing up to it. DM