Sirein, a Sudanese youth living in the Diaspora, posed the following questions to girifna in a effort to understand girifna’s mission, direction and methods of outreach to mobilize citizens. The outcome was the e-mail conversation we are sharing with you below:

1) Is the purpose of “girifna” just to get rid of the NCP, or does it have a more permanent goal?

Getting rid of the NCP would be the first step towards our ultimate goal, but not the final goal. To elaborate more,  “girifna” means: we disgusted/fed up of what going on, it is a revolt against the status quo policies in the form of dictatorship and injustice, and it is an  aspiration for what developed countries attained in terms of human rights, liberty and the promise for every citizen to be able to develop his/her own god-given potential. Hence it is a movement for a larger political and social transformation, but one step at a time .

2) Or is the purpose of “girifna” just to monitor, observe and spread the word about elections?

Yes, we intend to build a grassroots movement/teams that work towards fair and free elections. We want to ensure that our people vote smartly and in large numbers in order to get back our country. Our presence on the ground, ”boots on the ground” is vital to detect and record any malpractice during the election process.

3) In the pamphlets, it is mentioned that “girifna” will attempt to spread literature to all parts of Sudan about elections. How does it propose to do that?

By all means. We count on building a movement for awareness among the youth (who constitute two third of Sudan’s population) about the importance of the democratic system and liberal values in solving the country’s ongoing problems. We are building teams around the country. By January we hope to have 10,000+ volunteers in place .

4) Will flyers really spread the message given that most Sudanese are illiterate and/or do not speak Arabic? Will there be oral discussions and in other languages?

No, flyers are not enough to spread the word. That is why we already started to test the waters regarding direct people contact. On December 29 girifna had its first political rally/public forum at the UMMA party headquarter. It was attended by few hundred citizens (a section can be viewed here). We intended to repeat that a few times in January in other parts of Sudan. Our aim is to train a large team of good orators to mass communicate our message on a large/ medium and small scale; depending on conditions/resources. We also intend to canvas door to door, use pubic forums, print flyers and other means of communications. All depends on the resources on hand at the end of the day. We understand the diversity of our country and have no hesitation in addressing that.  We have already printed flayers in Beja language for Eastern Sudan. Other Sudanese languages will be used as well.

5) Some of the points around which “girifna” attempts to mobilize people contradict with other points of concern. For instance, they are angry at the government for not providing enough electricity. Are they concerned with it only in Khartoum area, or for the fact that Sudan in most areas does not have electricity? Also, the government’s response for trying to provide electricity is to build dams in Maroe, Kajbar, so on. This is not good for other Sudanese people.

You see ours is a coalition of diverse ideologies, regions and points of views. We have to carry along everyone who believes in democracy and peaceful patient struggle as a method to attain radical democratic reforms in our beloved country. For that to happen we kept our goal very simple and clear: defeat the fascist forces, restore democracy so we can all enjoy healthy political system. To do this all girifna volunteers agreed to keep their personal ideologies or political affiliations on the backburner for the moment.

6) Are there other candidates that “girifna” endorses or no?

No not as of now, it is still very early in the day, we have asked the democratic forces to have a common candidate standing against the NCP in every constituency. We will wait and see and decide on that accordingly.

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