 The holders of this office—first Sir Auckland Colvin, and later Sir Edgar Vincent—were instructed to exercise the greatest possible parsimony in Egypt's financial affairs.Maintaining the garrisons in the Sudan was costing the Egyptian government over 100,000 Egyptian pounds a year, an unmaintainable expense.It was therefore decided by the Egyptian government, under some coercion by their British controllers, that the Egyptian presence in the Sudan should be withdrawn and the country left to some form of self-government, likely headed by the Mahdi.