Face of Truth | Dr. Ibrahim Shaglawy Sudanese Dialogue: Consensus or Power-Sharing?
Yesterday, Mr. Osman Mirghani, in his column “Hadith al-Madina” in Al-Tayar newspaper, under the title “Crafting an Influential Dialogue Conference,” discussed the prospects of the Sudanese-Sudanese dialogue. Drawing on the metaphor of an automatic car’s gear shift, he outlined three scenarios for the anticipated conference: meaningful success (D), stagnation (N), and withdrawal (R). He made reaching a national consensus document and forming a transitional legislative body the focal points for measuring the dialogue’s success and its ability to bring about change in the political reality.
This approach shifts the discussion from holding the conference to the nature of what it should produce. In my view, scenario (D) is the most deserving of support and effort. In the context of war, weak performance, and external pressures, the country needs a formula that rebuilds a minimum level of political legitimacy and paves the way for the restoration of functioning institutions. But the question that must precede celebrating this scenario is: What kind of consensus do we want? And on what basis will the legislative body be formed?
Consensus is not merely bringing parties together around one table, nor distributing seats according to their relative power and negotiating positions. Rather, it is the management of interests and differences within a national framework in which the country’s interests take precedence over the calculations of political components or influence. Here lies the difference between consensus that lays the foundations for a new phase and power-sharing that reproduces the crisis under different names, appearances, and slogans.
It cannot be ignored that any political settlement will have to contend with a complex reality in which power balances, partisan interests, and fears of exclusion intersect, alongside the effects of war and regional and international interventions. Therefore, assuming that consensus can be reached without mutual concessions is unrealistic. Politics is fundamentally the art of managing what is possible. Consensus does not mean uniformity, but rather agreement on common rules that prevent differences from turning into a struggle over the very existence of the state.
However, pragmatism does not mean accommodating the recycling of elites or turning the transitional legislative body into an arena for dividing influence. An institution established through closed-door power-sharing may bear the name of consensus, but it remains captive to the parties that created it, and its legislative and oversight capacity becomes limited by the boundaries of the understandings that produced it. Its legitimacy should therefore not derive solely from the number of participating forces, but from clear representation criteria, its constitutional foundation, its mandates and duration, its accountability mechanisms, and its actual independence.
Here, the importance of the legislative council emerges as a natural outcome of dialogue. The absence of parliament since 2019 has entrenched an imbalance in the constitutional order, leaving crucial decisions concerning war and peace, sovereignty, and the economy without legislative oversight. This vacuum not only weakens state institutions internally but also makes national decision-making more vulnerable to external pressure and intervention.
The legislative council is not an adversary of the executive authority, but rather a constitutional support that broadens the base of national responsibility and provides crucial decisions with an important legitimacy that transcends individual will and balances of power and influence. In wartime, the need for it becomes even greater, because issues of peace, negotiations, and the future of the state should not remain confined to limited circles, regardless of the legitimacy of the circumstances that created them.
It is important to distinguish between the legitimacy of representation and the legitimacy of achievement. Consensus on forming the council may be a beginning for restoring institutions, but it does not grant it an open-ended mandate, nor does it exempt it from proving its ability to perform the tasks of this phase. Political representation, despite its necessity, should not overshadow community participation, particularly that of women, youth, internally displaced persons, refugees, native administrations, and community organizations. Their voices must not remain outside the equation of determining the country’s future.
Yet the greatest challenge lies not merely in forming the council, but in the nature of the authority it will exercise, the limits of its independence, and its ability to hold accountable the forces that helped establish it. An institution that lacks the right to oversee the forces that created it remains captive to the consensus that established it, regardless of how broad its membership may be. The success of dialogue is not measured solely by its ability to produce an agreement among elites, but by transforming that agreement into effective institutions through which citizens feel that their voices have become part of decision-making, and that consensus is beginning to reflect on their security, rights, and livelihoods.
From the perspective of #The_Face_of_Truth, the success of dialogue requires a clear roadmap linking political consensus to the restoration of security, peace, and institutions, and to the achievement of justice, while working to avoid scenarios (N) and (R), whether they lead to stagnation or the withdrawal of participating parties. Consensus is not measured by the division of seats or by rushing to reach an agreement, but by its ability to produce a national project that prevents any monopoly over the transitional phase. Sudan does not need an agreement that brings forces together around power as much as it needs a project that brings Sudanese people together around the state.
Wishing you continued well-being.
Monday, November 2, 2026
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