Brigades for calls and development for votes by Abdul-Aziz Ali Omer

In a cartoon drawing a heavy ballot box with a figure of authority sitting on the top hanged down a slip of paper that has an election notice in a futile response to the scream of a compatriot trodden under a ballot box. People of Halfaya left their Friday prayer congregation to express their land-property grievances. On other front, their brothers voiced their refusal of factionalism. The protest movement as Hayder makashifi put it in his column" Transparently" demanded development for votes. That has prompted him to reflect on other similar fair requests such as oil for food ,work for food and education for food. He explained how such phrases that mitigated sufferings with the troubling developments in Sudan produced other equivalents of an adverse consequences. Here is what he has written :
" ….Previously, we have read or heard about oil in exchange for food. In 1995, the U.N Security Council decision set up oil for food programme as a temporary measure to avail humanitarian needs .The U.N Security Council was anxious about Iraqi people suffering that resulted from the comprehensive penalties inflicted on Iraq government due to its invasion of Kuwait. We have also heard or read about food for work and education for food. The first is World Food Program sponsored project that provides food stuff as payment to WFP respective employees. The latter is a local experience in Port Sudan where authorities noted that in rural settlements parents don't enroll their children in school because of food problem and decided to carry out education for food program to induce parents who have school-aged children.
In Lagawa town in West Kurdofan citizens persevered in their second month sit-in under the slogan "No tribalism. No partisanship. Lagawa is the unanimous cause" and combined that slogan with no polling while we suffer in a reference to the absence of essential services and even a rudimentary infrastructure. In another similar incident, inhabitants of Halfaya in Bahri locality on Friday staged a protest to condemn the formal expropriation of their due lands allegedly sold to investors. The infuriated residents chanted " our lands beckon to us and no votes." And this means an invitation for a compromise with laity. ".
A brigade is one of groups in an army which is divided into. Each group has 3,000 or 5,000 individuals. In Arabic refers to both a military unit and the rank of Major-General.
Brigades for calls is a Sudanese term coined during the recent events that included the Sudan call agreement signed by opposing forces in Addis ababa,the Ethiopian capital. In a farewell ceremony by Popular Defense Forces for troops heading for Operations Zone, the state minister at Defense Department Major-lieutenant Yahya Muhammed Khayr criticized the Sudan call . He commented addressing opponents "You make calls while we form a brigade each day" And that implies the continuity of unrest in Sudan." Such a statement is very irritating for peace-loving and dialogue observers. Please come back to your sanity. The casualties of war are innocent people.