S. Sudan rebel leader blames conflict on failure to address root causes
December 14, 2014 (JUBA/ADDIS ABABA) – The leadership of South Sudanese armed opposition faction led by former vice president, Riek Machar, has unveiled a program which the rebel leader explained would be a solution to recurring conflicts and division within the leadership of the governing Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) in the country.
The opposition leader, who leads a group loyal to him, attributed the recurring of division within the ruling party, which has now further split into three separate groups, to lack of identifying and addressing the root causes.
“The first conflict occurred in 1983 just at the inception of the SPLM. The resolution of that conflict led to reunification of the SPLM/SPLA with Anya-nya II in 1987. However, this reunification left the SPLM intact without changes to accommodate the new reality.
It was just a return to the fold. This generated contradictions leading to the Nasir Declaration of August 1991 on the Right of Self Determination for the people of South Sudan and another split within the SPLM/SPLA,” Machar explained.
He said when the movement reunited in 2002 it also failed to address the root causes of 1991 division which further caused another crisis in Yei in 2004 between the incumbent president Salva Kiir Mayardit and his former boss, the SPLM founder, John Garang de Mabior.
Machar further explained that efforts that later on brought back together the two leaders focused on personal differences rather than structural causes.
“The reunification of the SPLM/SPLA in 2002 still did not address the structural reorganization of the SPLM/SPLA. It generated the Yei crisis in 2004.
The Rumbek conference was called to resolve what appeared to be personal differences between Dr. Garang and Salva Kiir Mayardit but did not address the structural causes of the contradiction. President Salva Kiir has refused to learn from these experiences instead he has now instituted a security system to buttress his fascist rule.
The Republic of South Sudan has now become a police state characterised by disappearances and assassination of dissenting voices and emasculated state institutions,” he further explained.
The armed opposition leader said his group has now constituted an armed political resistance movement, revealing that his programme shall entail the following:
1. The SPLM/SPLA calls for the institution of federal system of governance in which the states and the local governments shall be devolved more political, judicial and economic powers. We have renamed our country the Federal Republic of South Sudan and immediately establish 21 states based on the former districts during the colonial period instead of ten states;
2. The SPLM/SPLA shall implement Security Reforms affecting the Armed Forces, the National Security, the Police, the Correctional Services, the Civil Defence Services and the Wild Life Services in terms of their philosophy, mandate, mission and objectives to reflect the ethnic diversity of South Sudan in terms of the officer corps, men and women in them;
3. Undertake radical reforms in the judiciary and the justice administration system that will make the courts and dispensation of justice fair and accessible to the citizens;
4. Administrative reforms at the local levels to dovetail the traditional institutions of governance with the state governance institutions for peace and harmony in society;
5. Institute reforms in the political parties system to render them national rather that ethnic or regional in character. The SPLM/SPLA stands against politicisation of ethnicity or ethnicisation of politics as means or ladder to power and wealth;
6. Reform the civil service by depoliticizing and professionalizing it. The civil service is the backbone of the state. Recruitment, appointments and mobility within it shall be on basis of merits, experience and qualification;
7. Promote economic growth by investing the petrodollars in agriculture to stimulate the surplus potential in mechanized crop production, modernize animal husbandry to transform the enormous livestock from cultural to economic wealth. Introduce modern methods of fisheries and aquaculture in the rivers and wetlands. Organize and develop forestry and related economic activities including protection of Wildlife and other fauna for tourism and recreation;
8. Build modern physical infrastructure in cities, towns and villages. Construct inter- and intra-state highways, feeder roads, railways, high tension power transmission grids, fibre optics lines and microwave lines for telecommunication linking the different parts of the country and regionally;
9. Construct dams and hydroelectric power generation in addition to exploit the solar and wind energy to generate electricity for speedy industrialization of South Sudan and;
10. Encourage private sector as well as private public partnership to drive the development of South Sudan.
POWER-SHARING NOT ABANDONED
The rebel group in a separate interview with Sudan Tribune said the outcome of the recent consultative conference did not abandon a previous position at the peace talks on leadership power-sharing arrangements with the government.
Machar, who leads the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement (SPLM-in-Opposition), last month presented to the mediators of the regional body, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a proposal in which executive powers would be split between the president and the prime minister during a transitional period.
A resolution passed in the rebels’ conference in Pagak on Friday however rejected sharing executive powers with the president, pointing out that the president would only play a ceremonial role as head of state, leaving the prime minister to be fully in charge of government.
Rebel’s spokesperson however said the conference reached a compromise from the initial position.
“We have made a collective courageous compromise. Our initial position was for president Salva Kiir to step down because he administered the mass murder of tens of thousands of our people in Juba and plunged the country into this civil war. This was supposed to happen before any further negotiations with his government,” Machar’s spokesperson, James Gatdet Dak, explained to Sudan Tribune on Sunday.
“We however continued to negotiate with him and in the course of negotiating power-sharing we offered a conditional proposal which would continue to anchor some of the executive powers to the president. The government has unfortunately snubbed this offer. Our collective decision from the consultative conference in Pagak also accepts that the prime minister as head of government would share power with the president as head of state, but with no executive powers,” he added.
He argued that president Kiir was tasted for the past 10 years as president, saying he had been an obstacle to introduction of critical reforms and therefore should not be trusted to continue to head the government.
The rebel leader’s spokesman said they wanted the executive powers in order to ensure implementation of reforms in the various political, economic, security, judicial and public service sectors.
Dak also blamed the government for showing lack of interest in the peace process, saying its recent resolutions were a clear manifestation.
“Whenever we take a forward step to a just peace agreement, the government takes a step backward. They again stirred up the dust by passing contradicting resolutions in Juba which are a clear slap in the face to the peace process,” he said.
He stressed the best top executive leadership structure during a transitional period would comprise the president and the prime minister and the council of ministers, defending the decision to avoid positions of the vice president and two or three deputies to the prime minister.
He explained that the matter should not be about defending or creating “too many unnecessary” top executive positions for mere purposes of political accommodations or enjoying special status, but it is rather about what to do with such positions.
He however said the opposition group also believed in inclusivity which he said would be reflected in the ministerial positions and other portfolios.
Juba said it would maintain the vice president’s position with the incumbent James Wani Igga in many occasions vowing not to let go the post.
IGAD provided the two warring parties with a 15-day extendible opportunity to make consultations with their respective constituencies. This is to consolidate positions on the contentious issues ahead of next round of the peace talks.
(ST)