Sudan Govt to be axed

Press, 15 May 1987, Page 6

Sudan Govt to be axed

NZPA-Reuter Khartoum The Prime Minister, Sadeq al-Mahdi, citing interCabinet bickering and failure to improve Sudan’s debt-laden economy, has asked for his one-year-old coalition Government to be sacked. He said on State television yesterday that he had also made the request to the country’s Supreme Council, which is acting as collective Head of State, because of what he called the Government’s tardiness in producing a new penal code to replace Islamic sharia law. The introduction of the sharia law in 1983 by the former President, Jaafar Nimeiri, fuelled an insurgency, which enters its fifth year this month, by rebels in the African, nonMuslim south of the country.

Mr Mahdi said the Government would continue to carry out its duties until a new Government was formed. u.

Sudan, a country of 23 million people, nearly the size of India, has a $10.6 billion foreign debt which it has not been able to service fully since 1985. It owes between $450 and $5OO million to the International Monetary Fund, which last year declared Sudan ineligible for fresh loans. Mr Mahdi’s announcement followed a meeting with Muhammed Osman al-Mirghani, the spiritual leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, which partners the Prime Minister’s Umma Party in the coalition. The two men reviewed a report by senior members of their parties on the Government’s performance over the last 12 months, the official Sudan News Agency said.

Umma and D.U.P. have 100 and 63 seats respectively in the 301-seat Parliament elected in April last year in Sudan’s first democratic polls in nearly two decades.