You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service.

This is Hard Talk with me, Zainab Bedawi.

Thanks for downloading this edition of the program, and I hope you enjoy it.

Events have moved at breathtaking speed in Sudan in the past few days.

Umar al-Bashir is no longer president and under arrest.

And a new military-led council is running the country.

It says it will stay in place for two years. But the African Union is demanding it

hand over to a transitional civilian administration in days. And the protesters say they won't

give up until that happens. The demonstrations have been led by young professionals

who've made it clear they want to sever links with Sudan's military and Islamist past.

My guest is Ghazi Salahaddin, the chairman of an opposition grouping Sudan Reform Now.

But until 2013, he was a key advisor of President Bashir for a quarter of a century

and was associated with leadership of the Islamist wing in Bashir's governing party. Are politicians

like him now irrelevant? Ghazi Salah Haddin in Khartoum, welcome to hard talk. One very clear

outcome of these protests and revolution is that the old guard such as yourself

are now politically irrelevant. Isn't that right?

Well, that's being circulating amongst the political class in general, but I don't think

it's true. I think we have a growing,

coming up generation which is becoming relevant every day to our politics, but we still have

the old guard who we still count. Why do you still count? Because I tell you something that

General Omar Zayn al-Abdine, one of generals, said at a televised news conference in the 12th of April, that Mr Bashir's National Congress Party would be excluded from talks because it was responsible for what happened. That is true, and you were once a member of the NCP, so that means people don't want you in the picture.

Well, then let's people decide.

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