Sudan Doctors Syndicate elections: Important step in restoring democratic path

After 33 years of absence, doctors in Sudan have been able to complete the founding phase of restoring their democratic union, after the Doctors Syndicate had been dissolved along with other unions following the military coup led by former President Omar al-Bashir in June 1989.

On the evening of Saturday, March 12, the counting of votes in the union’s preliminary committee elections ended, to determine the winners of the membership of the executive office, which consists of 20 members, out of 52 candidates.

“The main task of the preliminary committee will be to prepare the articles of association for the union and to hold the general assembly that elects its executive office,” Dr. Ahmed Abdel Rahman, a member of the syndicate who was present during the voting, said in a statement to Jusoor Post.

Abdel Rahman said that one of the tasks of the preliminary committee is to “supervise the completion of the inventory process, prepare a draft for the Syndicate's constitution proposal, draft and approve electoral regulations, and organize the Syndicate's elections, in addition to the tasks stipulated in the Doctors Syndicate constitution of 1971, amended in 1987.”

Dr. Heba Omar Ibrahim won the position of head of the preliminary committee, with 31 more votes than the other candidate, becoming the first woman to win this position in Sudan’s history. Syndicate elections will be held within six months.

For its part, the Socialist Doctors Association (RASH) considered that the election of the syndicate’s preliminary committee “represents the beginning of the quest for a unified, factional union that represents all doctors.”

In a statement, RASH indicated the presence of an estimated number of representatives of the subsidiary bodies who were elected from the various states during a process that lasted for more than four years, during which the Electoral Committee of the Unified Office of Physicians worked continuously to reach this moment.

History and prominent role

The Doctors Syndicate was established at the end of the 1940s during the English colonization of Sudan. It had national roles in addressing doctors' issues.

The syndicate continued to have a prominent role in the country's political history, where it participated strongly in the periods of democratic rule and in the struggle against military dictatorships. In 1985, the head of the Doctors Syndicate, Dr. Al-Jazouli Daf’allah, was chosen as the transitional prime minister.

One of the first victims of the 1989 military coup in Sudan was trade union doctor Ali Fadl, who was tortured to death in government prisons at the time. Many doctors have also been killed since the outbreak of the Sudanese revolution in December 2018.

Doctors' associations also had a prominent role in overthrowing Omar al-Bashir’s regime in 2019 through their membership in the Sudanese Professionals Association in two blocs, the Central Committee of Doctors and the Syndicate of Forensic Doctors.