Hope must be followed by actions and good governance

By Steven Wondu, Embassymag.ca

Jan 11, 2006 — On Jan. 9, 2005, the Government of Sudan and the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement-Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army (SPLM-SPLA) signed the Comprehensive Peace
Agreement (CPA) that ended the country’s 22-year civil
war. The agreement was the outcome of a long process
of tortuous negotiations that began in Abuja, Nigeria
in 1992.

The CPA has several protocols, each dealing with
specific aspects of the conflict including the status
of religion in governance, the right of the people of
the South to self-determination, security
arrangements, power sharing, wealth sharing, the
future of the district of Abyei, and the future of the
Nuba Mountains and Southern Blue Nile regions. The CPA
also includes a time schedule of implementation
modalities, a ceasefire agreement, and the deployment
of international monitors. The terms of the agreement
are to apply during a six year interim period at the
end of which the people of Southern Sudan would decide
in a plebiscite whether to remain part of Sudan or opt
for a separate independent state.

The most remarkable observation is that the ceasefire
held. This is a miracle which students of
post-conflict management will have to explain later.
For now, I can only suggest that the Sudan war might
be one of those few examples where the combatants and
their constituents had fully exhausted themselves.
It’s like a fire that has consumed itself to
extinction. Of course, there was resistance to change
by some government field commanders who benefited from
the predatory economy of the war. There were also
threats to the peace from parasitic armed groups like
the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). But those threats
did not amount to major military confrontations. A
supplementary explanation could be the existence of
the Monitoring and Evaluation Team (VMT) that was
deployed during the negotiations to observe the
implementation of the Cessation of Hostilities
Agreement signed when the negotiations began showing
promising advancements in 2002-2003. In addition, the
United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) began
deploying contingents of its planned 10,000 troops in
the Spring of 2005. Whether it was exhaustion,
goodwill of the parties, the watchful eyes of VMT and
UNMIS, good luck or a combination of all the above and
other factors, the ceasefire agreement did hold in
2005.

Many pundits opine that had John Garang lived, the
stalling and foot-dragging in the implementation of
the CPA would have been much less. According to this
school of thought, the National Congress Party sought
to exploit the ‘vacuum’ and test the muscle of the new
leadership in the South. The ‘vacuum’ was immediately
filled, although it took several months for the high
echelons of the SPLM-SPLA to recover from the shock of
the sudden exit of John Garang. General Salva Kiir in
particular bore the brunt of the burden of
responsibility. He had to quickly figure out how he
was going to prevent a crisis, calm the grieving
population and lead the government. John Garang’s
untimely departure must become the very reason for the
South to do whatever it takes to guarantee the
survival of the legacy. The tricky thing about this
noble attitude is that it can be exploited by those
with vested interest in the failure of the CPA.

The public mood in the South is one of great hope for
the future. The CPA enjoys universal acclamation.
People are expecting to experience basic things of
life that for decades had been unimaginable. They can
sleep, work and travel. Soon, they will also have
roads, clinics, schools, water, electricity and
sports. Families and friends will soon be reunited
after decades of separation. There will be
opportunities to honour those who died during the
struggle. The challenge facing the government and
society in general is that the expectations are high
while patience is short. Resources are certainly
scarce. Concerted efforts have to be made to deliver
the ‘quick impact’ programs and services elucidated in
the SPLM’s Strategic Transitional Framework and the
Joint Assessment Mission (JAM) report. In many
post-conflict situations, those who inherit the reigns
of power tend to lapse into personal exploits and
focus less on addressing and redressing the very
injustices that had led to armed conflict in the first
place. Southern Sudanese leaders saw these drawbacks
elsewhere on the continent and in the wider world. It
is everyone’s hope that their experience will inform
them to eschew the general trend and become an
exception in the heart of Africa.

Meanwhile, the people are not waiting for the
international community or even their new government
to make a difference in their lives. Many are
repatriating, resettling and rehabilitating
themselves. Communities are constructing make-shift
classrooms for their children. Volunteerism is still
the main source of service delivery, especially in
education and security. Commercial activity is picking
up without a banking system and common currency.

Hope is necessary at the moment, but it is certainly
not sufficient in the long run. Hope and good will
have to be supplemented by practical actions that
guarantee good governance. The democracy enshrined in
the CPA needs to be put in motion. In 2005, the
interim legislatures and executive leadership were
selected through consultation. There was no better
method then, and by and large, things went well.

Two very important pre-election processes should be
kicking off now in the South. One is the preparation
for a population census that must take place in 2007.
The task in daunting and is tied to the progress in
the repatriation of refugees and internally displaced
persons. How the census authorities are going to
navigate this process will be keenly watched in 2006.

The second process is political parties’ conventions.
The composition of the governments in the South is
based on some convenient formula of ‘inclusiveness.’
Each party likes to consider it self the most popular.
The argument can only be settled by a universal vote.
But the parties need to adopt constitutions, elect
leaders, agree on election platforms and then go to
the people. The Northern parties are ahead of their
Southern counterparts with respect to the convening of
conventions and even, as in the case of the National
Congress Party, the nomination of presidential
candidates in the next general elections. Of course,
the Southern parties have more constraints, but the
SPLM is in a much better position to move forward
given that it had been preparing for the convention
for a long time. In fact, according to the Strategic
Transitional Framework, the convention should have
taken place in December 2004. Unless the parties
organize themselves democratically and in good time,
the general elections cannot be democratic.

The preamble of the CPA commits the signatories to
make unity attractive for the voters in the
referendum. This means that the parties must, by
meticulously implementing all the stipulations of the
agreement, win the hearts of the Southerners in favor
of retaining the unity of the Sudan. Not much of that
was evident in 2005. The referendum is still five
years away, and that is eternity in politics.

*Steven Wondu is the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement
(SPLM) Representative in North America.