The Truth Angle | Ibrahim Shaglawi The Civil Service on the Guillotine

The Minister of Human Resources and Social Welfare, Muntasir Ahmed Saleh, previously issued Decision No. (22) of 2026, which provides for the formation of a high technical committee to survey federal government employees, identify categories eligible for early retirement, develop a proposal to reduce the number of employees, and submit recommendations on how to carry out such reductions, granting the committee broad powers to access state institutions’ data and seek assistance from whomever it deems appropriate to accomplish its tasks.

From multiple perspectives, the decision is understood as administrative measures aimed at restructuring the civil service; however, a deeper political and developmental reading reveals that it goes beyond administrative reform and expenditure rationalization, connecting to a transitional process previously referred to, which is what we discuss in this article in light of its contexts and prior backgrounds.

Since the outbreak of the war in Sudan on April 15, 2023, the government apparatus has no longer been operating at full capacity, but has continued at less than half its actual potential, not because that level is sufficient to run the state, but as an exceptional formula imposed by war, displacement, institutional paralysis, and the difficulty of movement. Accordingly, what appeared over the past years as the ability to run the state with half its workforce was not an indication of surplus employment, but rather an emergency operation imposed by necessity.

From here emerges the first paradox. The state that is returning to the capital, Khartoum, and restoring the work of its institutions will not only face the task of operating offices, but also the requirements of reconstruction, restoring services, reviving daily administrative machinery, and reactivating customs, taxation, civil registry, education, and health sectors. Therefore, the coming phase requires restoring the full workforce, redistributing and rehabilitating it, rather than reducing it in a arbitrary manner.

This debate extends to deeper roots in the Sudanese experience, where during the rule of the Salvation Government, a research paper was previously presented by former Minister of Finance Abdel Rahim Hamdi on restructuring the philosophy of public employment, proposing a shift from permanent employment to a direct contractual system renewed every two years, in exchange for higher salaries tied to efficiency, specialization, and productivity.

However, that vision, despite its economic and developmental validity, did not receive sufficient momentum within state institutions, not due to technical weakness, but because of complexities related to the social and political structure and the nature of the state at that stage.

The civil service in Sudan was never merely a payroll system or human resource administration; it represented one of the pillars of national unity, a manifestation of the modern state, and a container for middle-class stability and continuity of government institutions. Therefore, touching the idea of stable employment does not only affect administration, but strikes at the core of the social contract between the state and its citizens.

Notably, the civil service file has remained a subject of debate, re-emerging strongly during the transitional government of Abdalla Hamdok within the political transition and international support framework. Within the mandate of the United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS), upon the request of the government, there was technical and institutional support for reforming state institutions, including the civil service, through capacity building, governance enhancement, and the development of more efficient institutions.

However, that trajectory did not evolve into a complete program, as the transitional phase quickly slipped from state-building into political crisis management, and both the mission and the government became preoccupied with political conflict rather than structural reform.

From this perspective, the decision appears closer to the revival of a postponed project than to a temporary response to a financial crisis. Here, the sensitivity of the scene increases. Since the fall of Omar al-Bashir’s government, the civil service file has remained present in political discourse as one of the most important arenas of influence and union conflict within the state.

Internal political debates, as well as some regional and international perspectives on Sudan, have repeatedly suggested that state institutions still carry the legacy of accumulated “deep state” structures, and that any transition requires rebuilding these institutions on new foundations of neutrality and efficiency.

However, it is important not to overlook a crucial observation regarding the nature of the committee that submitted its recommendations. Granting a committee with limited mandate broad powers affecting the fate of thousands of employees opens the door to serious questions about governance and transparency safeguards, in the absence of an elected legislative body exercising oversight and accountability.

Previous experiences, most notably the experience of the “Dismantling Empowerment Committee” after 2019, have demonstrated that weak legal safeguards and the expansion of political discretion in exclusion decisions can turn reform processes into tools for reshaping power balances, rather than mechanisms for consolidating justice and strengthening good governance.

According to #The_Truth_Angle, the absence of transparency, the absence of a legislative council, and the confusion of professional standards may turn reform—even under the slogans of efficiency and governance—into a tool for redistributing influence within state institutions through soft means. From this perspective, what is happening appears to be an extension of a postponed project since the fall of Omar al-Bashir’s regime, in which the civil service file has remained a field of contention, intersecting with internal, regional, and international visions that link stability to institutional restructuring.

The question thus remains open: are we facing state reform, or the guillotine of the civil service?

May you remain in health and well-being.