Why hide, face it headlong!
Editorial by the Khartoum Monitor
September 22, 2005 — Majority of the Sudanese people are vexed with the recent appointments in the government of national unity.
For northerners, it is same people with same faces and even those who resigned for substantive corruption allegations made a U-turn and found a footing in the cabinet.
The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) are also over clouded with indignation from their leader who avoids coming out to meet the press and the southern public.
The SPLM seemed to be divided over the issue. One group says their palace-entrenched leader has broken them up between Garang and non-Garang loyalists, and allowed himself to be carried away by what they termed as wrong and self-styled advisers who have committed themselves over the years to weaken the movement.
The other SPLM group says the criteria used for those selected for appointment was based linked to individual positions during the historic Rumbek meeting of the then movement’s leadership council.
While non-SPLM southern politicians are unhappy because of what they deemed as direct violation of their power-sharing quota, they charged that the first vice-president has robbed them of their positions and offered them to his now palace advisers who neither belonged to the SPLM nor officially affiliated to a particular political party.
In Juba his deputy remarked that “they” did not expect the outcome of power sharing to end in loosing all economic sector portfolios to National Congress Party (NCP), another sign of disappointment.
This is the adverse side of the government of national unity that is widely expected to please the whole nation.
Some facts are missing and not available to all these disappointed groups and the only compromise is that the first vice-president should come out of his hiding and explain the missing truth.
President Al-Bashir has done his part with regard to NCP appointments. That was a good and stately gesture from our president, and his first deputy, Salva Kiir, should follow suit. This will change the hard and harsh criticism he now receives from all sides.
The vice-president needs to address the SPLA and assure them that they never fought for the comfort of their enemies or to facilitate coming to the palace of their adversaries. He needs to address the SPLM supporters and loyalists in both the south and the north, that the CPA is upheld and the same principles still exits.
Whatever justifications Salva Kiir might come out with could soothe the anger of his army and party members. The most difficult to convince would be the political parties whose seats in the power sharing in the government national unity have gone to a couple of his palace advisers. To them this is violation of a right established to them by the CPA.
It is hoped that the first vice-president, Salva Kiir, did learn his lesson and should know that the way forward starts with avoiding to repeat the same mistake in the distribution of seats in the government of south Sudan to all political parties in the proportions enshrined in the CPA and distancing himself from dubious advisers.
This is Kiir’s only salvation, learning from his mistakes and reconciling with those whom he wronged.