The army tightens its grip on Sudan’s political transition

THE FIRST the Sudanese public saw of their leader in almost a month was a visibly strained Abdalla Hamdok, the civilian prime minister, attempting to put a positive spin on the agreement he had just signed with the man who had briefly ousted him in a coup. In a short televised ceremony Mr Hamdok (on the right) said he had accepted the deal to end the bloodshed that had roiled Khartoum, the capital, since his arrest on October 25th. Joining hands with the very men who had locked him up, would, he insisted, “prevent our country from plunging into the unknown”. In response, jeering demonstrators outside the presidential palace burnt tires, erected barricades and chanted, “Hamdok has sold the revolution.” Police fired tear-gas. A 16-year-old protester was shot dead.For the man who upended Sudan’s transition to democracy by launching the coup, things are going swimmingly. Lieutenant-General Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan, Sudan’s de facto president (on the left), praised Mr Hamdok, declaring that the agreement was a “clear defence of the revolution” of two years previously, when demonstrators toppled Omar al-Bashir, a ruthless Islamist despot who had ruled Sudan for three decades. Back then the generals had seized power in a coup only to begrudgingly sign a coalition agreement with the leaders of the protests a few months later. This time, though, the men with guns who have ruled Sudan for almost all its post-independence history have largely got their way.