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Sudan
Constitutional Development
One of the first acts of the RCC-NS after seizing power was to
abolish by decree the transitional Constitution of 1985, drafted
following the overthrow of the Nimeiri government to replace the
1973 Permanent Constitution. Bashir and other RCC-NS members initially
promised that a constituent assembly would be convened to draw
up a new constitution. During its first eighteen months, however,
the RCC-NS government failed to address the issue of a constitution.
Then in early 1991, in response to increasing criticism of its
authoritarian and arbitrary rule, the RCC-NS announced the convening
of a constitutional conference. Bashir invited civilian politicians,
including those opposed to the government, to attend the conference
and discuss without fear of reprisal legal procedures that might
be set forth in a constitutional document. Although representatives
of some banned political parties attended the constitutional conference
in April, the conclave's lack of an electoral mandate, its government
sponsorship, and a boycott by major opposition groups served to
undermine the legitimacy of its deliberations.
The 1991 constitutional conference necessarily labored under
a heavy historical legacy: drawing up a constitution acceptable
to all elements of the country's diverse population has been an
intractable political problem since Sudan became independent in
1956 with a temporary constitution known as the Transitional Constitution.
The primary reason for this situation has been the inability of
the country's major religious groups, the majority Muslims and
the minority non-Muslims, to agree on the role of the sharia,
or Islamic law. Islamic political groups, led by the Muslim Brotherhood,
have insisted that any constitution must be based on the sharia.
The non-Muslims have been equally insistent that the country must
have a secular constitution. Despite the convening over the years
of numerous committees, conferences, and constituent assemblies
to discuss or draft a constitution, most Muslim and non-Muslim
political leaders refused to compromise their views about the
role of the sharia. The unresolved constitutional issue remained
one of the major sources of disaffection in the predominantly
non-Muslim south, where deepseated fears of Islamization have
been reinforced by the government's Islamic education policies
during the Ibrahim Abbud military dictatorship (1958-64), Nimeiri's
September 1983 introduction of the Islamic sharia by decree, and
the failure since 1985 to remove the sharia as the basis of the
legal system.
Data as of June 1991
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