Sudan NCP-SPLM bad partnership

BY James Okuk

May 29, 2009 — I’m a bit worried about the fate of the CPA as the mid-term elections are approaching so near. What qualms me much at this moment is not the sabotage of the NCP for “full” implementation of the CPA but the attempted defiance of the SPLM Secretariat from the agreed “joint” efforts to implement this important deal.

It is being observed these days that the SPLM Secretariat is so busy trying to divorce its partnership with the NCP for a full and joint implementation of the CPA. The Secretary-General is moving and politicking (I do not know whether to call it seriously) with a possibility of making misplaced alliances with anti-CPA Northern political parties.

The reasons for this defiant behavior may be because of the elections fever or partly because of lust for a short-cut to presidential power in the Gordon Palace in Khartoum where some Northern politicians think a black man from the South is needed to be a rubber-stamp there to make unity attractive by deceptive default.

But do Southerners desire independence of their beloved Motherland because a black man from their region hasn’t been allowed to rule the Sudan since the colonial exit so far? What about the control of wealth and economy of the Country by brown Northerners?

Will a single black man from the South in the Sudan Presidential Palace manage to dismantle the unjust legacy of economic hegemony by Northern elites? What will power of politics do without power of economy?

It’s well monitored that Egypt is behind the idea of coalition of Northern Political Parties with the SPLM because Egyptians are so worried about the voices of the 90% Southerners who wants separation of the South from the North so that South Sudan could become a purely independent African state in future. For them, the independence of South Sudan is not good at all for the free-of-charge flow of Nile waters to Egypt.

But should the SPLM please the treacherous Egyptian government and lose the trust of the great people of Southern Sudan? I’d have not raised my eyebrows if the NCP was within that alliance-in-the-cooking because the joint presence of both the SPLM and the NCP in any grouping that is determined to usurp government powers in the Sudan does not violate the Spirit and Letter of the CPA. Hence, it isn’t wise at all for the SPLM Secretariat to join or dine with political parties who have been digging a grave for Self-determination clause in the CPA.

To avoid the looming troubles ahead, I’d humbly appeal to the SPLM Secretariat to reconsider its wrong move and come back to the right path of the CPA implementation; the Catholic partnership with NCP for the interim period. After all Southerners are just left with less than two years to divorce from the North and go for their own destiny. Let the SPLM leadership revisit the following statements from the article I wrote some months back explaining the reason “Why SPLM and NCP Must be in the Sudan Government as Catholic Married Partners” and take it as a brotherly advice from me:

It’s very necessary for the Sudan People Liberation Movement (SPLM) and National Congress (NCP) to keep on with the agreed partnership for the sake of joint and full implementation of the CPA till its expiry date at the end of the six-year interim period for the caretaker government – with all its levels – of the temporary unified one Sudan. My premises for this thesis are:

1. The SPLM and NCP are the ‘native owners’ of the CPA who’ve signed a government contract (not necessarily a social compact) publicly with international witnesses, obliged themselves constitutionally, and stated it categorically that they’ll be the leading partners to implement this agreement jointly and fully (read Chapeau and Machakos Protocol).

This de jure hard fact is rarely comprehended by the arrogant cadres from SPLM and NCP. These imprudent or wicked political fanatics do not want to understand that the CPA is supposed to be a binding Catholic Marriage (No divorce) for the entire period of its life-span (2005–2011). Thus, these fanatics need to be tamed or distanced from echelons of government or from the two-partner parties’ decision-making position in the South or North before it’s too late to neutralize their excreted poisons.

2. The CPA won’t be jointly and fully implemented in letter and spirit if one of its major partners jump outside the Sudan government or assumed an opposition role against it. Without SPLM-NCP Catholic Partnership and Mutual Cooperation in the management of diverse public affairs of Sudanese constitutionally, the CPA will never survive to reach its maturity and destined age.

If there were some secret gentlemen deals in Naivasha or elsewhere, these should be suppressed as illegal and not allowed to surface openly from their tacit forms. Such kinds of secret individual contracts aren’t sacred to be entertained at the moment, because they’ll surely spoil the broth of the CPA before the people of Southern Sudan reach the desired point of emptying the dish and calling for more if at all there will be any need. The other minor partners who were invited after the table has been prepared and the CPA broth put on it for ready consumption, should be encouraged to continue sitting on the table; otherwise if any of them chose to leave earlier before the last prayers are said, the boycott won’t spoil the banquet.

3. The experts of conflict resolutions have confessed that the CPA has set the best model for resolving other national conflicts and also other regional conflicts in Africa. This is a credit the two native partners of the CPA should be proud of and never negate it by any defiant behaviour.

The consequences of aborting the CPA from the womb of Sudanese politics of governance will never be desirable, nor will any other conflicting parties come up at the end of the ‘new war’ with any best document than the CPA. They will only go back to ‘square one’ in order to come back to ‘square two’ to lick their vomit without any thing new to offer after the waste of material resources and human lives.

Dear SPLM leaders, please don’t allow your anger and hatred for the NCP to take you away from the CPA legality until we’re done with our efforts to achieve South Sudan independence.

Don’t be duped by Northerners that being the President of a Country regardless of other historical legacies and perennial factors is all that matters; otherwise your fight for the Presidency will only be like a fight of a bald-headed man over a comb.

For the People’s sake don’t betray the Cause that has been nurtured by the blood of martyrs and the innocents!

James Okuk, PhD Student, University of Nairobi, [email protected]