KHARTOUM // Sudan’s president, Omar Al Bashir, on Sunday replaced two vice presidents and part of his cabinet after urgent calls for reform in the 24-year-old regime.
The changes come less than a week after leading ruling party dissident Ghazi Salahuddin Atabani said he had launched a new “Reform” party that has attracted thousands of mostly young supporters.
It is the most serious split in years within Mr Al Bashir’s National Congress Party, which has faced internal criticism over alleged corruption and stagnant leadership.
The “big changes” announced on Sunday “were meant to bring forward experienced youth”, the NCP deputy chairman Nafie Ali Nafie said, according to the Sudanese Media Centre which is close to the security apparatus.
Mr Nafie is stepping down from his post as Mr Al Bashir’s adviser and assistant, to be replaced by the senior NCP member Ibrahim Ghandour, officials said.
Other regime stalwarts who lost their jobs were top vice president, Ali Osman Taha, and the oil minister, Awad Ahmad Al Jaz.
Bakri Hassan Saleh, a former interior and defence minister, replaces Mr Taha while Hassabo Mohammed Abdel Rahman becomes second vice president.
Mr Saleh was presidential affairs minister in the cabinet which Mr Al Bashir dismissed last week ahead of the reshuffle.
Mr Abdel Rahman had been the NCP’s political secretary.
The defence minister, Abdelrahim Mohammed Hussein, keeps his job.
Both Mr Hussein and Mr Al Bashir are wanted by The Hague-based International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes in Sudan’s Darfur region.
Also retaining his post was the foreign minister, Ali Ahmad Karti.
A minority of cabinet members who belong to parties other than the NCP will keep their posts pending decisions by those parties, officials said.
The new vice president Mr Saleh was a leader of the 1989 Islamist-backed coup which brought Mr Al Bashir to power, Robert O Collins wrote in A History of Modern Sudan.
He called Mr Saleh “an efficient and sinister defender of the revolution” who was entrusted with rebuilding the country’s intelligence apparatus.
Critics of Mr Al Bashir’s government have become increasingly vocal since the government slashed fuel subsidies in September, leading to the worst urban unrest of his rule.
Security forces are believed to have killed more than 200 demonstrators, Amnesty International said, but the government has given a toll of less than half that figure.
* Agence France-Presse