Ibrahim Shaglawi's article asks whether Sudan's dialogue will produce consensus or become a matter of quota-sharing. It cites Professor Othman Mirghani's column in Al-Tayyar, titled "Making an Influential Dialogue Conference," which examined the outcomes of Sudanese-Sudanese dialogue. Mirghani used the metaphor of an automatic car's gearshift to lay out three scenarios for the anticipated conference: influential success, stagnation, and dispersal, marked D, N and R.