الدكتور صدقي كبلو: صراع الهامش مع المركز هو أيدلوجي أيضا

Quote: Hashim Awad, (1966) . Awad based his analysis for the ten years 1956-1966 on the study of the ruling group, which he held responsible for the corruption and bad government. According to Awad this group was mainly composed of businessmen who had great influence in the political parties through financing the activities of these parties (1966, 78-81). He found the origin of the power of the businessmen in their collaboration with the colonial rule. He argued their domination of the local councils in which the intellectuals refused to participate when these councils were first established by the colonial government. He also argued their ascendancy to the central government through the domination of the parties and the parliament. Awad argued that the Sudanese businessmen group had allied itself to the foreign businessmen group. Through that alliance the foreign group found safeguards against the growing nationalism and the local group gained finance by the foreign banks and profits in joint operations with foreign commercial companies (pp58-60). He also argued that a fraction of the Sudanese businessmen group were mostly moneylenders to agriculture in both modern and traditional. He went on to argue that the main problem of agriculture was exploitation by money lenders to which even the owners of large irrigated schemes on the White and Blue Nile banks as well as those on the Northern Province were subjected (Ibid., 22) By studying the origin of the members of the Advisory Council (1945-47), the Legislative Assembly (1948-5) and the first Parliament (1954-58), he noticed that they were businessmen, tribal leaders or ex-government employees. By comparing the origin of members in the three institutions found that there was increasing weight of the businessmen compared to that of the aristocracy of the tribal leaders. He also noticed that increasing numbers of the tribal leaders were becoming part of the businessmen community. He noticed that there was a change in the ex-employees category which tended to be composed of mainly of junior employees who resigned their jobs to be full-time politicians, compared to the retired senior employees who were members of the two first councils (Ibid, 115). Those new politicians became more dependent on political parties on their living, and hence dependent on the businessmen who financed the parties. They were also tended to establish their own business enterprises to safeguard their future (Ibid, 115-116). Awad held the businessmen group responsible for all the problems of the country including the problem of the South (Ibid., 51-52). He identified the other problems as the exploitation of agricultural producers which undermined the development of agriculture in the country (Ibid, 22-27), corruption which wasted resources and increased inequality and increased the uneven development of the country which endangered its unity (Ibid., 4, 136-7 ). Awad rightly criticised those who reduce the crisis in the country to a crisis of an unstable government which could be resolved by some constitutional amendment or a draft of a permanent constitution (Ibid., 4).