The State of No Difference

مقال للعطر افتضاح بعنوان (الأمر ما اختلف)
ترجمة الأستاذ الصحافي والكاتب المرموق محمد عثمان إبراهيم
له الشكر الجزيل

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The State of No Difference
Dr. Muzammil Abu Elgasim

* It is Sudan, the country of wonders and strangeness, where those who claim to represent the marginalized people fluctuate in the bliss of luxury hotels, and devour their soft bread and fresh succulent meat for free, while those who are being represented find no miserable food even when they are willing to pay!

* It is Sudan, my rich but poor homeland, as Salah Ahmed Ibrahim says in his timeless poem Shein -wo-dishin (Ugly and Dreadful) where the ministries of the economic sector waste millions of dollars to pay the fines of moored ships awaiting unloading in Port Sudan with each of them incurring twenty thousand dollars every morning, while the government is failing to provide the dollar needed to import cancer medications, dialysis solutions and other life-saving drugs.

* In my country, afflicted by corruption, mismanagement and devastation of rectitude, the Ministry of Finance was required to pay nearly a trillion pounds to finance the purchase of (70) new cars for the Sovereignty Council. In the meantime, (18) luxury cars were burned in a neglected garage belonging to the very Council whose members ride in Lexus, Infiniti and Mercedes. In the other side, the people ride in light and heavy trucks, and everything that goes on two legs or four feet in the heart of the capital of no means of public transportation.

* In the land of wonders and disappointed hope, a fierce revolution erupted to combat corruption, injustice and nepotism with the immortal chant (peaceful against the thieves), and blooming young people offer their lives and blood in return for change, but alas, one president has been replaced by eleven and many others to come! The Presidency Council, or Sovereignty is inflatable and expandable to accommodate more of the new presidents that each of them would receive a couple of billions of pounds to cover his petty cash, convoy of vehicles, hospitality and personal aides’ expenses.
In this very country, children are dying of scorpion stings because of the lack of antidotes.

In the same country, the citizens spend their lives in front of locked-down hospitals, get no medication and die of fevers, epidemics or the most trivial reasons because their government doesn’t care about them.

* A depressed country, whose people wake up in the middle of the night to start the search for the missing bread, or to queue in the rows of cars stacked in kilometres length heading to the service stations.
* In my country that is afflicted with ruined consciousness, dead hearts, and souls devoid of emotion, bids are published for as little jobs as maintenance of a cafeteria or construction of a small staircase in a state institution, while strategic goods worth hundreds of millions of dollars are getting imported without bids, or with sham quotations in a period of two or three working days. These huge revenues are allocated solely to the favourable ones and the parasites who are unappeasable from (shoving in) the money of the disadvantaged.

* In our excruciating country, subsidies are lifted from every commodity, and the state relinquished its responsibility of caring for the poor and the downtrodden were left to be plundered by hunger, high prices and inflation.
Meanwhile, houses of senior officials are renovated by billions of pounds and the bills are paid without bidding.

* In my country whose people revolted against injustice and took to the streets chanting (Freedom, Peace and Justice), justice is being assassinated a thousand times at the threshold of the new empowerment of the new nepotistic.
In my grieving country, the Prosecutors’ Club was actioning a strike after its leadership accused the Attorney General of corruption and leniency towards the thieves of the deposed regime.
In my grieving country, thousands of employees are being fired to replace a nepotism with another.

* Even the judiciary was not spared from the raids of the new exclusionists, so one hundred and fifty of the best judges were written off with the sword of the alleged dismantling (the old regime) where a political committee took the job of the courts in condemning and punishing people before they were subjected to fair trials, a contempt foretold for the famous legal fundamental (the accused is innocent until proven guilty).

* The Prime Minister pledged before the UN General Assembly that no journalist would be imprisoned in the New Sudan, a sooner-to-be dishonoured promise when newspapers and TV channels headquarters were surrounded by military vehicles mounted with DShK guns. The workers were dispersed, and the unaccomplished mission will soon be complimented by imprisoning journalists on charges of (undermining the constitutional system)!
History repeats itself and today is just like yesterday!

* For God’s sake, what has changed in the post-revolution Sudan, after more than a year and a half?
* What did we accomplish apart from replacing a failing group with those who surpass them in the inefficiency and dispassion with peoples’ suffering?
* We changed the rulers but not the mentality of ruling. The current situation is much similar to the previous, and the successors are apparently fascinated by the predecessors.
They all draw from the same source and rule with the same manual that compels the coercion of whoever may be tempted to criticize those clinging to power.
* What a remorse and sorrow: The state is no different!

مزمل ابو القاسم – صحيفة اليوم التالي