Questioning the sincerity of president Beshir’s speech.
By Deng Yiech*
Feb 16, 2006 — One may wonder why President Beshir , for the first time, unwaveringly addressed the crowd of hesitant Southern mass at Juba’s Peace Square rally (February 14, 2006) and told them to legally and freely exercise their right to self-determination during the 2011 referendum as stipulated in the CPA document. There are thousands of questions which would prompt one to ask the sincerity of the president. But the appalling question, among others, is that, does he mean what he said or it is just a mere political rhetoric to persuade Southerners to accept his empty and impractical impressions?
Well, if he can and will translate his words into deeds, well and good! But the president can rest assured that Southerners of today are mentally awake and capable of scrutinizing words piece by piece and selectively sift out the logical and meaningful ones which are worth considering. Gone are the days when Southerners were being fed with lies and were prone to accept them. Now Southerners are on guard and stand firmly on an equal footing, watching every step which the current regime, unlike previous regimes, might take. The failure of the previous peace agreements has taught us best to not let the history repeats itself as George Santayana professed in his witty phrase that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” And in his further quotations he stated: “A man is morally free when, in full possession of his living humanity, he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity.”
We are now masters of own destiny. We have broken chains fettered on our feet. We are on the move! The CPA has paved the way for us to decide our fate, because it is the vital necessity that breeds only happiness, liberty, security, prosperity, love and progress. However, although we have had enough of war effects, if the CPA is not fully implemented and the NIF sees into it as something that makes us compromise everything for nothing beneficial, except for the sake of protecting it, going back to war wouldn’t be a deviant option! In other words, if the CPA has become just a paper that lacks any substances of a real peace, then it’s not sacred. It deserves to be violated.
Furthermore, as I said earlier, we are apprised of why previous peace agreements, such as Addis Ababa Accord of 1972 and Khartoum Peace Accord (1997) failed; because the terms and conditions for the preservation of peace and avoidance of future war, were designed, most often than not, in ambiguous fashions. And for Jallaba, secrecy mattered most in keep them; and for the fact that the principles and conflict-resolution mechanisms were crafted in calculative and obscure manners because the successive regimes of Arab north always had motives behind their seemingly honest peace dealings with Southerners. But such pretensions are well-understood! Southerners have graduated from various schools of thought, and therefore the art of rhetoric is ostensibly the game that Mr. President can’t play with this time around because it is an obsolete, null and void tool which can blind-mask people’s eyes to detect falsehood.
In conclusion, the ball is now in NIF’s courtyard. The GOSS and its people world-wide are now looking forward to seeing any provisions stipulated in the CPA paper implemented fully and unconditionally. Otherwise failing to do so will be responded with reciprocal actions by whatever means necessary. It is high time that lip service can’t be condoned anymore.
And finally, I congratulate Mr. President for saying that “in case [Southerners opted for] separation, the northerners will treat the southerners as brothers, adding that officials in Khartoum will even come to southern Sudan to join them in celebrating their independence anniversary” (SRS/ST). Yes, no doubt we will be good neighbors, thank-you for that. May be who knows, if “unity is made attractive,” secession option will not be desirable because it wasn’t the sole factor which prompted Southerners to take arms, but injustice and inequitable distribution of resources.
* Deng Yiech is a Sudanese based in Canada. Email: [email protected]