Sudan NCP criticizes SPLM leadership for “wrong decisions”
April 14, 2008 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party (NCP) questioned the decision making process within Sudan People Liberation Movement (SPLM).
The Information Secretariat official in the NCP, Kamal Obeid told the official Sudan News Agency (SUNA) that he is not sure “who is in the center of the decision making process within the SPLM”.
Obeid said the SPLM made “wrong decisions in the wrong times creating an unhealthy political situation”.
The NCP official cited examples of wrong decisions such as withdrawing from the government of national unity last year and appointing an administrative body in the disputed region of Abyei.
The remarks by Sudan ruling party comes after the NCP and the SPLM managed to defuse a crisis that erupted over the decision by the ex-rebels to block census in the south until the end of the year.
“It was postponed,” South Sudanese Information Minister Gabriel Changson Chang said last Saturday. “There is a sizeable number of southern Sudanese in northern Sudan and if they are not transported to the south before the census it will affect the wealth sharing.”
Questions on ethnicity and religion were not included in the census questionnaire, contrary to the southern government’s wishes Chang said.
The SPLM also said that border demarcation process is not complete which prevents the south from adding people which will impact power sharing formula. Moreover the southern group said the war in Darfur will impede the conduct of census and as such will only be partial.
But Sudanese president Omar Hassan Al-Bashir and his First Vice president Salva Kiir agreed to resume the census next week during a meeting held late Sunday.
Obeid accused SPLM of taking contradictory stances on the census citing remarks by their leaders of encouraging southerners to take part in the process hours before the kickoff.
“Not knowing the center of decision making in SPLM as partner in running the country hurts the political process and complicate any prospective resolutions” he said.
Earlier today SPLM Deputy Secretary-General Yasir Arman told SUNA that the decision to suspend the census was taken by the semi-autonomous government of South Sudan (GoSS) and not the SPLM though the latter expressed concerns over the integrity of the process.
Arman denied that the census suspension decision was an attempt to avoid the upcoming elections.
However Obeid said that “the group which pushed for these decisions within the SPLM lost the opportunity to make a mature image in governance especially as it shoulders the responsibility to participate in a political transitional period, fragile by nature and does not support any ill-considered decisions which are not backed by any legal of political justifications”.
Sudan’s Vice-President Salva Kiir said yesterday in Juba during the press conference with the Ugandan president that the Sudanese presidency together with southern Sudan councilors and ministers have on Sunday night of 13th April both in Juba and in Khartoum agreed to postpone the fifth Sudan Population and Housing Census for seven days in order to give equal participation opportunity for the whole country.
22nd April 2008 will be the official date for the start of the fifth Sudan Population and Housing Census instead of 15th April 2008 as previously scheduled, he stressed.
Presidential Affairs ministers, Luka Biong stated that the question of exclusion of ethnicity and religious identification in the census questionnaire would be addressed later by both SPLM and NCP are principal’s signatories to the CPA of 9th January 2005.
The SPLM signed a peace deal in January 2005 with the government of the National Congress Party in January 2005 ending two decades of civil war in Southern Sudan. The peace deal made the SPLM, the ruling party in the south and the NCP the ruling party in the north.
In 2011, southerners will be asked to vote in a referendum on whether they want to be independent or remain part of Sudan. A census is supposed to prelude the elections but has stalled because of cash shortage and disagreement over the process.
(ST)