Pagan Amum: A contribution factor to SPLM’s pullout from GoNU

By Eng. Charles B. Kisanga

October 13, 2004 — Some of the episodes are now being attributed to Pagan Amum from some quarters of Southern Sudan. Pagan also seemed to have designed it intentionally to make Lt General Salva Kiir as the one shouldering the whole responsibility for failing to deliver on the CPA and many failures so that he, untimely as leader, will be much discredited with failures to deliver. It is said that even Lt General Salva Kiir was mostly absent during the debate in Juba from October 4th to 11th and had little or no contribution to the decision to pullout even if temporary as they claim. Hence it was a decision by an interim Politburo which has high number of Pagan Amum handpicked friends from the old SPLM kitchen cabinet ( Salva Kiir was never part of the old SPLM kitchen cabinet) and hence Lt General Salva Kiir is getting the culpability for something he has little power over.

One of the reasons mentioned for the withdraw was that the SPLM submitted list for reshuffle of the cabinet several month ago but the President of the republic slept on it without wanting to act and the SPLM had a right to reshuffle its members in GoNU. However the problem is not as simple as that. The SPLM group led by the SPLM Secretary General Pagan Amum wants the man he considers his archenemy and fellow tribesman Dr. Lam Akol out of the cabinet and as such on top of the list was Dr. Lam Akol, the Foreign minister. Of course Dr. Lam Akol is a big political figure with his own following and he is not a man you can just throw away because you want more tribal appointmenst which will result in a Shilluk being replaced by still a majority tribe man. Sudan President Omer El Beshir has been under fire from SPLM factions each demanding that President Beshir should not give in to more tribal appointments from the SPLM. The move to dismiss all SPLM members from GoNU who do not agree with tribal and corrupt policies and to replace them with members from particular tribesmen could easily result in tribal war in Southern Sudan. Hence it not that easy just to dismiss more of our people as SPLM becomes more factionalised and each camp wants to take over the reigns of power.

These seem to be some of the sinister polices behind Pagan Amum’s decision to compel the so called SPLM Interim Politburo with his faction of former SPLM kitchen cabinet to announce suspension of participation in GoNU as a way to compel the NCP to act on difficult polices while they, SPLM faction had no ability to handle it due to their infighting. You do not expect anybody to work when they are factionalised in a way that you live today only as best as your faction can fight to keep you there.

Also seeing that Pagan Amum SPLM faction is dominating the Interim Politburo, even Lt General Salva Kiir was scared and tried to appoint his royal elements into the SPLM Politburo in order to boost his own ranking in the so called Interim SPM Politburo. Hence it is no surprise to see some changes recently like three new positions for deputy chairman and new members to the Interim Politburo. Why such appointments any why when we could easily do a Conventions for a good party.

So the failures of CPA implementation still are due to more infighting among SPLM members than attributed to Khartoum. Then all comes back again to tribalism and corruption as something making life more difficult for SPLM.

Realising that SPLM has no way out among themselves Pagan has tried to internationalise a small problem by pulling out of GoNU and claiming it is the Arabs or Northerners as usual as way of playing to the South Sudanese people’s emotions of Arabs as the number enemy.

My motto is really to bring truth about the issues so the masses of Southern Sudan because many in SPLM are trying to hide the truth so that the masses should just play to the tunes of Arab enemy without seeing the underlying SPLM incompetence and weakness brought about by divisions. If the SPLM is too big and too troublesome to survive then we need to break it up into organised factions like the split in 1991 before it is too late, and the sooner the better.

Eng. Kisanga is a former SPLM NLC member who currently lives and works in exile in UK as Consultant Communication Systems/Software Engineer. He is also chairman of Western Equatoria Azande Community world wide Organisation. He can be reached on [email protected]