Alrabae Adam Ezaldeen General secretary of, Sudan Liberation Movement and Army (SLM/A in uk)
SLM statement on the secular state
SLM/A. Mission Statement
Sudan Liberation Army and Movement (SLA/M) is an independent political movement. It dedicated to fostering liberal secular democratic state base on equal citizenship rights. Through our objectives of equal rights and democratic initiatives, we hope to engage our fellow Sudanese people who concern about secular democratic state that construct a concrete and feasible ways to advance peace, order and good government.
More than almost any other nations, Sudan is composed of persons of various religious, races, culture, ethnic and geographical backgrounds. There are, of course, many citizens who retain strong religious, ethnic, racial and tribal ties. But there are also others who, in their heritage, are able to find different racial, ethic and tribal heritages represented, and who think themselves simply as Sudanese. And that, of course, is important, because difference is primarily a matter of how the person in question thinks of himself or herself. The self- identification, if any, determines the individual or groups has on personal or group behavior, both political and otherwise. In this respect, Sudan is in many ways a diverse society, that is, a country composed of variety of peoples. This diversity can be measured in many ways in terms of socio-cultural, religion, language, region, economic and politics. With respect to all these differences and for more than half century, there is specific political truism that denying equal citizenship rights to the majority of our citizens.
From the standpoint of the relation between citizens and government, we are living in strange time, and it seems that there is more value in addressing this time on its own term than in continuing to patch up and preserve than hollow architectonics of our society. Our efforts could go into defense of the integral equal representational reality, the one associated with a rights-endowed, autonomous well, or they could go into dissolution and abandonment of that reality. One of the most important sad lessons we must remember from the old Sudanese political parties (right and left wing political parties) is that they failed to create coherent political visions that gives equal representation to our society at large.
We believe that this is the real threat to the unity of our unity. The fundamental reality of our sad political life was dating back to our independent day in 1956, which formulated on the existence of few dominant elites in central government in Khartoum. In this sense, many of the pivotal episodes in Sudan?s ruling history have centered in the hands of these few exclusivist elites in the central government. This reality made the two-thirds of our citizens? feel alienated or that the polity is not theirs to engage in it. And these precise scopes of exclusion remain the most serious threat to the unity and stability of our country.
Visions of uphold such dilemma will play vital roles in our contemporary Sudanese politics. We believe that there is an enormous amount of ink has been spilt on the allegedly to answer the question of equal political representation. However, as a Sudanese people, and in more than 50 years as an independent nation, we have failed to build prosperous, tolerant, peaceful, free, and democratic society on what is one of the most ethnocultural diverse society in the world. We have not become so accustomed to our diversity that we often to notice how exceptional Sudan is in this regard. Most of the time however, there is constitution policy emphasis on one culture, language and religion hold the idea that all divers citizens have to assimilate to them. In this regard, most of the Sudanese people are unwilling to tolerate such practices.
Increasing numbers of the people?s today consider the political process exclusive, unrepresentative, and failed to reflect the diversity of all Sudanese people and their regions. A vivid illustration is the constitution set up of the country, which excluded most of representative process, we might say, it excluded the majority of the society from their equal rights. Some people excluded from sharing political power, public office, and other rights. And we have good reason to believe that this long sustained history of exclusion is not a matter of historical blind spots, this exclusion is build into the very calculable conceptual framework of denial of equal rights to some specific individuals and groups of people of our country.
This built-in exclusion let most of the people use different methods to call for their rights. But, the problem has an added complexity when the existing structures of inequalities imposed to the nation state structure, and its accompanying conceptions of citizenship, in the first place. Thus, the question, then, is, can we let the inequality remains heavily influenced by membership of few elites in central government in Khartoum, or can we let these elites practice their exclusion policies forever? Can we expected fair and open process of democracy, responsive to the public will; consensus about how this process out to work? Can we able achieve respect and equal representation to all our citizens? Why we have such trouble learning to live together as a nation? What can be done to eradicate such practices and hold our society and its diversity together?
As politically alert our society are well aware, the proper role of race, culture and religious in the public life. We see that if the state commits to one religion, race or culture, members of other race, culture or faiths might be alienated since such values would be imposed upon them. They may be prohibited from practicing the rituals in public, and they may be deprived of their right to hold certain positions in the state, such as president, or other key positions. This would create disturbances and conflicts that would present obstacles for the progress of our country. Here, we are not in favor of any values of one religion, race or culture to be imposed on any groups or individuals in our country Sudan. We are in favor of a constitution that based on liberal and secular and religion should be seprate from the state. In short, we consider that the state should take a secular approach, neither supporting nor denying any race, culture or religion. It is up to the citizens to follow whatever faith and values they choose and practice what rituals they please.
The best way to achieve such objectives is only through equal political representation. In this sense, we consider that in any political system, political leadership requires guidelines for action-the supreme law or constitution of the state, which defines and limits political power, and the existence of constitution embodies the rule of law. In addition to setting out commitment to certain general goals of constitution that intended to provide guarantee equal rights to all our people. The authority of the state is to be exercised rationally and without malice, with all citizens, no matter what her or his transgression, cannot be denied the due process of law. No individual or group is above the law; and all are equal before the law. No government or administrative official has any power beyond what is awarded by law.
To obtain such objective, we strive to provide flexible secular democratic structure whereby all Sudanese people can equally included and actively represented. To do so, we committed to the view that the dignity of each Sudanese man and woman is the cardinal principle of peaceful liberal democratic society. We believe in principles that group rights, individual freedom, responsibility and human dignity is the framework of a just society. Also, we recognize that human dignity requires that all citizens have access to full information concerning the policies and leaderships of the country. As well as the opportunity to participate in open and public assessment of such means, such modifications of policies and leadership as they deem desirable to promote general well-being to the people of our country. We aspire to contribute to the creation and emergence of strong civil society. Such society, we believe, would offer an alternative political structure to the vast majority of the Sudanese people, and become both an incentive and glue for the establishment in the country to improve. We challenging and balancing, the exclusion, discrimination, segregations and stereotyping, and that would be by establish civil society that helps accelerate much needed, social, cultural, religious, economic and political reform. Over all, we are working for the right of all Sudanese people, a reights that represent a decent life; a life that is free from fear, oppression, and persecutions. We do not intend to weaken or be antagonistic to any entity, group, or individual. To achieve our goals, we intend to work with all those who share our vision for liberty, equality, human rights, tolerance and a democratically governed Sudan.
Alrabae Adam Ezaldeen General secretary of, Sudan Liberation Movement and Army (SLM/A in uk)
