Khartoum, Sudan – African leaders bypassed one of the continent’s most controversial presidents as the choice to head the African Union on Tuesday and opted instead for a leader who has managed to reinvent himself, Denis Sassou Nguesso of the Congo Republic, a one-time coup leader now regarded as a stabilizing force in the region.
President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan had wanted the job as Africa’s chief peacemaker and emissary, but his colleagues, holding a summit in the Sudanese capital, thought otherwise, troubled by the Sudanese government’s involvement in the war in the western Darfur region of the country.
Bashir did not lose out completely, because his colleagues indicated that the job would be his in 2007. The offer came with the expectation Bashir work to end the Darfur crisis.
Sassou, who succeeds Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria as chairman of the 53-member bloc, is a smartly dressed former paratrooper who has long used his perch in the tiny Congo Republic, on the Atlantic coast, to speak out on behalf of Africa.
He is one of the longest-serving leaders in the African Union and previously filled the rotating chairmanship in the group’s predecessor, the Organization of African States.
In some respects, Sassou is not so different from the man who failed to get the job.
Sassou and Bashir took power in military coups, in 1979 and 1989, respectively.
The two soldiers also preside over countries that have spent much of their post-colonial history torn by civil war.
But one major difference is that the Congo Republic has managed to quell its civil war, while Sudan has reached a peace deal in one big conflict, its 20-year north-south dispute, only to find itself enmeshed in another one, the crisis in Darfur.
Also, while Sudan is in the early stages of allowing political dissent, Sassou opened up his country to multiparty elections in 1992. He found himself voted out of office. But he resurfaced five years later, backed by Angolan troops, and grabbed back the presidency in a brief but bloody civil war.
“Sassou’s human rights record is nothing to celebrate, but there are not atrocities on the level of Sudan,” said Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch.