Sudan’s military leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan on Sunday denies that military and paramilitary members of the transitional government could run for the July 2023 elections.
“The president of the Sovereign Council denied what the Agence France-Presse reported about the participation of the military in the upcoming elections,” his office says in a statement.
Sudan has been run by a joint military-civilian ruling council since August 2019, but civilian members were changed following a coup in October this year.
AFP asked Burhan in an interview on Saturday whether the military components and the paramilitary members of the transitional Council will be able to participate in elections planned for 2023.
Burhan responded by saying the August 2019 agreement had “included a clear clause that all participants of the transitional period will not be allowed to take part of the period that directly follows it.”
But a landmark 2020 peace deal with armed opposition groups “granted some participants to the transitional period the right to become part of the government” that followed the transition, he said.
The statement issued on Sunday said Burhan meant that only ex-rebel groups that signed a peace accord in 2020 could be candidates in the planned elections.