The SPLM on the brink of a new dawn
The 2nd National Convention as a springboard
Parek Maduot
February 20, 2008 — Many supporters and sympathizers of the SPLM are nowadays contemplating the upcoming 2nd National Convention of the Movement with great hope for what it could mean for the immediate and long term future. There are admittedly serious challenges facing the SPLM party in its stated quest to transform into a genuine popular movement that is able to translate its lofty objectives into concrete dividends for its membership and the country at large. Even the very legacy of having its genesis as an armed liberation struggle has not been without its negative effects on the project of political transformation and consolidation after the CPA.
It is therefore appropriate to join many who think that this conclave of party members and leaders is an historic opportunity to dramatically set the course for the Movement for decades to come. My singular hope is that the planners of the Convention and our leadership look at this upcoming gathering with an eye to posterity, and not tied down only to the current travails and problems with the CPA implementation. I hope we emerge from the Convention with a set of documents and a new resolve that will announce the birth of a giant movement and not just a laundry list of grievances and promises by the junior partner of the NCP.
History is full of instances when a Movement or cause finds itself at the crossroads, with its adherents challenged to reaffirm its legitimacy and righteousness, and more importantly, called upon to chart another course for achieving its noble objectives. In 1955, the African National Congress of South Africa and its band of allied parties and Congresses came together in one symbolic and powerful form at the Congress of the People in Kliptown, Soweto, to sign the FREEDOM CHARTER. This simple yet hugely inspiring set of principles comprehensively articulated the basic pillars of the anti-apartheid cause, and breathed greater life and vigor into the liberation struggle. That very document is now considered the stone upon which the ANC anchored its struggle, and provided the moral inspiration for the much admired 1996 post-apartheid constitution. The Sudan is now buffeted by similar but not identical challenges to 1955 South Africa, from state inspired terror to tribalism to rampant official corruption to searing poverty, and the SPLM will have to practically take a stance and define a way to address them in a manner akin to that perennial African Liberation Movement, the ANC.
The SPLM will likewise have to reaffirm what makes it a different breed among its contemporaries, and that is the singular fact that its vision accords complete space for addressing the grievances and realizing the aspirations of every Sudanese. Equally important, the SPLM must also address the most insidious charge thrown at it, and that is the claim that the vision of New Sudan is fundamentally contradictory to the aspirations of the people of Southern Sudan. There is fundamental harmony between that vision and the fundamental right of Southern Sudanese to formally determine the State of the Sudanese Nation State in 2011. Leaving alone the most obvious supporting contention for the preceding statement, and that is the fact that the SPLM is the one that ultimately negotiated and won the right to Self- determination, there is the fact that the historic and geopolitical analyses that led to the identification of the fundamental problem of the Sudan, and subsequent articulation of an optimal way to solve it, has been proven correct by recent history. The uprisings in Darfur, the East and the far-North, are further proof that the very foundation of the Sudanese republic rests on rampant marginalization of the many by the few. Nonetheless, the fact that almost all Sudanese are suffering under the yoke of the privileged few is not enough of a salve to any of the sufferers, and that’s why the CPA provides the South with the democratic and moral right to decide its fate unconditionally. But as a party, the SPLM needs to drive home the idea that its platform provides the best alternative for all Sudanese, and this convention should once and for all put the final nail on the coffin of the campaign to marginalize it into a Southern party.
Beyond the soaring rhetoric about liberation and ending marginalization, the SPLM needs to come out of the convention with its house put in order and primed to face the obstacles ahead. As that popular Barack Obama refrain goes, the SPLM needs to come out of the convention “fired up and ready to go.” It is always said that the wining chances of a relay team are determined by its slowest member. Likewise, the performances of the SPLM as a party in the political fray and as a player in the government are determined by the quality of cadres deployed to carry out these functions. Serious investment in development programs to cultivate and identify appropriate cadres should be committed. A transparent and effective way for new blood to emerge from the rank and file must also be explicitly outlined, and a concurrent process for monitoring and evaluation of party officials must be instituted to ensure that the stated policy goals of the party are being pursued and implemented.
The reaffirmation of a return to the previously stated commitment to an agricultural revolution as the foundation of the development program is terribly needed. The so called “oil curse” is an apt definition to what is befalling Sudan now, and nowhere might that be more dramatically rendered than in the South, where the SPLM is the ruling party. A movement-endorsed economic policy that seriously deals with that eventuality might be the only key to avoiding future internal wars and environmental degradation. The SPLM will also need to come out with a clear mandate to itself about the issue of the most deserving of our citizens, and those are the veterans of the armed struggle and their families. Specifically in the South and the three transitional areas, creative approaches to the demobilization and rehabilitation process must go beyond the current slow pace, and must be integrated with other social programs in Health and Education.
These prescriptions might seem overly specific and possible the purview of the executives organs in the Government of National Unity and the Government of Southern Sudan. But that is really the root cause of some of our current malaise, because these respective governments need to be implementers of the political agendas of bona fide popular political parties like the SPLM. It is therefore important that the SPLM convention emerges with a comprehensive prescription to as many problems as can be identified, and then empower its leadership and membership to fight tooth and nail to implement them as the best course for the people of Sudan.
Parek Maduot can be reached at [email protected]