Sudan’s Nyandeng warns against tribalism and Wani against corruption

By James Gatdet Dak

May 22, 2008 (JUBA) – Addressing the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A’s) 25th Silver Jubilee celebrations on Wednesday in Juba at the Mausoleum of the late SPLM Chairperson, Dr. John Garang de Mabior, the widow of the late Madam Rebecca Nyandeng de Mabior warned the SPLM leadership against tribalism.

She congratulated the elected new leadership of the transformed Party and urged them to unite in reconciliatory spirit. “Don’t look at each other through tribal differences,” she advised, adding that people should not agitate one another which may force someone to think of what he did not want to think of in the first place.

“If you remove somebody who is doing his job very well and replace him or her with someone who will not do it well, are you not taking our nation backward?,” Nyandeng posed the question to the crowd of thousands of citizens who were constantly applauding her remarks.

The widow of the founding father of the Movement narrated to the crowd how the first bullet was fired in Bor town which prompted her and her husband to flee to Ethiopia and formed the revolutionary Movement on May 16, 1983.

She criticized the SPLM Northern Sector for not fulfilling the 25% allocated to women in the Party’s constitution.

The newly elected SPLM Second Deputy Chairperson and Speaker of the Southern Sudan Legislative Assembly, Honorable James Wani Igga, congratulated General Salva Kiir Mayardit for his unanimous election by the Movement’s Second National Convention.

In a reconciliatory spirit, Salva Kiir was nominated as SPLM Chairperson by Dr. Riek Machar, seconded by Mr. Pagan Amum and confirmed by all the delegates to the Convention without any body opposing his nomination.

Kiir will lead the Party for the next five years.

James Wani lamented that government’s money go into pockets of some few individuals and urged the SPLM Chairperson and President of the Government of Southern Sudan to vigorously fight against corruption this time as a leader mandated by his people.

(ST)