SPLM supporters attack Sudan’s Blue Nile governor in row over peace deal
May 21, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Former southern rebels assaulted a Sudanese state governor in the most violent row so far over implementing a 2005 peace deal that ended two decades of civil war in the south, reports said Sunday.
Supporters of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement pelted Blue Nile state governor Abdelrahman Abumedein with stones at a public rally Saturday evening, forcing him to flee the podium, Khartoum newspapers said.
The former rebels had been angered by comments made by the governor, a member of President Omar al-Beshir’s long dominant National Congress party, over the peace deal’s provisions for the contested south of Blue Nile state.
After six years of interim autonomy, residents of the south are to be granted a referendum on secession from Sudan.
But even though rebel fighters were active in Blue Nile state during the war, they will not take part in the referendum but instead enjoy greater autonomy and resources within the continuing Sudan.
Blue Nile “is a northern, not a southern state and there will be no referendum or negotiation about this,” Abumedein crowed to the fury of the crowd.
Former rebel officials stepped in to reassure supporters that the peace deal meant they would now get 45 percent of all executive and legislative positions in the area as well as civil service jobs.
But the governor took issue with the reassurances, charging that the quota referred only to “constitutional positions” and prompting a rash of stone-throwing by the crowd.
Ironically, the former rebels had invited the governor to address the rally, organized to mark the SPLM’s 23rd anniversary. In the end, Abumedein had to be ushered from the stage by SPLM stewards.
The former rebels have accused the president’s National Congress of dragging its feet over implementing the January 2005 peace deal, warning that the delay could harm their uneasy relationship in the interim power-sharing government.
(ST)