Commentary censures Sudanese party leader’s remarks on peace agreement
Commentary censures Sudanese party leader’s remarks on peace agreement
BBC Monitoring Service – United Kingdom
Published: Oct 04, 2006
Text of commentary by Alfred Taban headed ‘Professor Ibrahim Ahmad Umar should be prosecuted’, in English by Sudanese newspaper Khartoum Monitor on 4 October
It is with utter disbelief that Prof Ibrahim Ahmad Umar is still the third highest ranking person in the National Congress Party (NCP) after his utterances about the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). The learned doctor, who was minister of higher education and scientific research and professor of psychology at the University of Khartoum, said that if the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM) should support the deployment of UN troops in Darfur, the NCP would cancel the CPA. When he made his utterances, the SPLM leadership council, meeting in Juba had already passed a resolution endorsing the sending of UN troops to help bring peace to Darfur.
As if to leave nobody in doubt of what it intended to do, the NCP governor of Sinnar State, dismissed Alawiya Kibeida, a SPLM member and minister of health of the state. Alawiya had spoken against the professor for his threats.
Because Prof Ibrahim has not been reprimanded, we take it that what he said is official NCP policy. The party wants to intimidate the SPLM into submission; it wants to punish the SPLM for its stand on Darfur. The professor’s threats are nothing short of a declaration of war. Anybody who wants to abrogate an international treaty that ended a war wants a resumption of war, pure and simple.
The SPLM must respond to this declaration of war on the CPA by the NCP. The SPLM must now consider the NCP as rebels who have turned against the national unity government and the CPA. The SPLM should look for a partner who is credible and can implement the CPA. But first the SPLM should ask the NCP to say openly if it, as a party, supports the professor. If it reprimands the professor and takes legal action against him, then the issue can be put behind us. If it does not then the SPLM should respond by declaring the NCP a rebel party and move against it. This is self-defence, meant to deter aggression. It is a question of life and death.
The SPLM should realize that its resolve to defend the CPA is being tested. If it fails to respond decisively to this test, then the CPA is finished and the south is in danger of being re-colonized. The SPLM and the people of the south are now being called fifth columnists. We all know what that means. From name calling to liquidation, we have been down that path before.
The SPLM must live up to its responsibility of protecting the CPA and ensuring the survival of its people, the marginalized people of this country. It is now very clear many people in the NCP do not believe in the CPA and are looking for the slightest chance to scuffle this deal. Darfur has now provided them with that opening and unless the SPLM/SPLA stand firm, we may be back to war sooner than we thought.
Source: Khartoum Monitor, Khartoum, in English 4 Oct 06