Sudan lawmakers postpone amendment to keep Bashir in power

KHARTOUM: A parliamentary committee tasked with amending Sudan’s constitution to allow President Omar al Bashir to run for another term said on Saturday it would indefinitely postpone a meeting to draft these changes, state news agency SUNA said.

The move comes amid almost daily street protests since middecember, initially sparked by rising food prices and cash shortages, against Bashir’s nearly 30year rule.

SUNA cited “special emergency commitments” as the cause for the delay without providing further details.

A majority of lawmakers had backed the proposed amendment two weeks before protests broke out and had tasked an emergency committee with drafting the changes ahead of the parliament’s first session in April.

Bashir, a former army officer, came to power after a military coup. He won elections in 2010 and 2015 after changes in the constitution following a peace agreement with southern rebels, who then seceded to form South Sudan.

He is now facing unprecedented opposition to his rule, with street protests involving hundreds of people almost every day.

Elections are expected to be held in the spring of 2020.

A Sudanese policeman died from his wounds after protesters threw stones at a police vehicle passing close to demonstrations in the capital Khartoum, a police spokesman said on Friday.

The vehicle was passing the area by chance late on Thursday, the spokesman said, adding that a number of suspects had been arrested.

The case brings the official death toll during protests that have spread since December 19 across Sudan to 32, including three security personnel. An opposition-linked doctors’ syndicate said last week that 57 people had been killed in the protests.

“The vehicle was pelted with stones, and they were police returning from training and had no link to the dispersal of the unrest,” said police spokesman Hashem Ali.

Security forces dispersed protests close to the presidential palace in Khartoum on Thursday, rounding up several dozen of them and driving them away in pick up trucks, witnesses said.

On Friday, police fired teargas to disperse hundreds of people who protested after leaving a mosque in Omdurman, across the Nile from central Khartoum, witnesses said.