Sudan peace deal suffers setbacks

Editorial, The Khartoum Monitor

Oct 17, 2005 — In an interview with the Nairobi-based Daily Nation on 16 October 2005, Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) secretary-general Pagan Amum Okech disclosed that there are setbacks placed on the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).

This serves to further confirm the lack of confidence that has become part of our culture.

An agreement does not mean much for us as yet, and history alone testifies to this.

Without citing Abel Alier’s book on the issue, the idea that agreements can be easily dishonoured, is already running in our veins.

In the case of the CPA, the National Congress Party (NCP) seemed to have signed it to wipe off certain intricate issues and to buy time.

In other words, the agreement was signed so that it is implemented with a different, which is foreign to the CPA itself. And the first of this kind of deviant spirit was the experience we had with power sharing.

That experience, which still remains fresh in our minds, was quite telling. It shows that we should expect a lot more of what will contravene or defy the spirit and letter of the CPA. If this were false, we would not have suffered these ups and downs in the implementation process.

The slogan about “making unity attractive” is just a farce. It does not make anything constructive. How could a party that is expected to make unity attractive be the first to place obstacles on the implementation process of the CPA? It is in the CPA that the need to make unity attractive is stipulated. At the same time, it is this same document, which is being given a slap on the face. So it is difficult to know what we are up to.

The tide seems to be one of fragmentation. With all these negative experience, the people of South Sudan are just being cushioned against their will to vote honourably for separation. And so be it.