SPLM lies are better than Bona Malual’s truths
Taban Abel Aguek
October 17, 2009 — In a response to a letter written to him by Sayed Sadik al Mahdi, former Prime Minister of Sudan and current leader of the Northern-based UMMA party, and posted in the South Sudan Nation website, Mr. Bona Malual strikingly wrote in the headline that “I don’t accept political lying by SPLM”.
It would be time consuming if I had to argue that SPLM have never spoken or delivered any political lie. But I find it hard to tolerate the conduct and constant attitudes of Uncle Bona Malual towards both SPLM and Southerners. The Political Conference in Juba was not a political lying by SPLM or any party that attended it because it very much reflected on the needs of all Southerners, Darfurians and any other marginalized Sudanese. Mr. Bona would have acted in the same manner as the NCP, by considering it ‘an opposition alliance’ and keep quiet rather than go on and sing all songs of criticism even in forums where it even matters not. Mr. Sadik al Mahdi, in some sense, was right to question Bona’s intentions on his long criticism-based stands on every national issue. Yet these issues were happening when he was there as either a part-taker or a witness. The question one would want to ask is why our all-knowing Uncle Bona comes to cry foul when these national decisions are done when he was there. Meanwhile, one could agree that SPLM, as a collection of many different political heads and ideas, at some points may have lied or failed but its agenda for South Sudan has surpassed all its failures. Uncle Bona’s political truths have not been strong enough to give him the hold of one region like Greater Bahr el Ghazal let alone the Southern Sudan. Contrarily, the SPLM lies liberated South Sudan and today reigns even in the heart of his very own Gogrial North constituency.
Whenever uncle Bona decides to wage war it is either for a wrong reason or using a strategy that is often wide of the mark. For instance, for all the time Southerners spent in the bush fighting for freedom, justice and equality Uncle Bona was busy fighting a different war of his own – the war whose agenda was geared towards how Dr. John Garang could be finished and how to take on the leadership of the South. With the death of Dr. Garang after a few days in office most people felt prayers of all evil-wishers were answered – behold Garang’s successor would only opt to offer half chances for opportunists; and Bona being one of them ended up docketing the post of a Presidential Advisor in the Government of National Unity, which he again grudgingly received with open arms; yet this was going to be the podium he would later use to stage another wrong war against SPLM. According to Uncle Bona, the SPLM vision of New Sudan was useless and unfathomable and that the SPLM flag had no meaning for the South and Southerners. And still he did not give one of his own that was so good to be turned down. Currently, his claim is that the Juba conference of all political parties is a political lie by the SPLM. It poignantly went down through the nerves of both foes and fans of Uncle Bona when he used the NCP’s 3rd General Conference to condemn SPLM just after turning down one in his home city of Juba. Then later the proper response he would give to Sadik al Mahdi’s ‘bad faith’ letter was the SPLM political lies and being a partner in the CPA, the failed agreements of the past of which SPLM was not a partisan and so on and so forth. One wonders where really Uncle Bona wants to take us to.
The failure of the 1965 Round Table and the SPLM political lies do not connect to the Juba Conference of all political parties of 2009. SPLM do not have intentions to turn anything upside down in the CPA, which it helped bring, but it demands change in the way Sudanese politics is being run especially the reluctance towards a democratic transformation. Moreover, SPLM rejects no responsibility in sharing the Government with NCP but it refuses that to be used as an excuse in letting both parties shoulder each other’s guilt. What belongs to NCP must be carried by NCP and all other political parties must be made to understand this. SPLM wanted, and still has tried, to show who and what causes hiccups in the CPA through the conference that those of Bona now criticize. More still, the NCP’s policy towards the South is not any healthier than Mahgoub’s policy that Bona referred to. It is one of the reasons why the SPLM convened the second Juba Conference to check things out and ensure that safety is guaranteed by all towards all important impending issues, for instance the elections in 2010 and referendum in 2011. The repeat of the past mistakes would have better been expressed in such conferences rather be mentioned in inter-personal letters. It is the NCP that objected All Sudan Political Parties Conference, which could have been used to collectively remind each other of the past mistakes and evil policies like the one of Mahgoub towards the South that Bona still complains about. Ironically, it is South’s Bona that supported NCP.
It is easier to see the peck on others than removing the log on your own eye. Uncle Bona’s truths are either gloomy or are never coming. It has been a long wait since the old Sudan. If the South were to be liberated with mouth’s truths alone, not rightful acts, then martyrs like Dr. John Garang and William Deng Nhial would not have died. No body would want Bona to die but fewer struggles; more talking and big friendship with the North makes all his truths so light. And this is a reality. He who has so many political truths to tell continuously wins a constituency; but he who has one big truth and does it wins a nation. This may be the only difference between Uncle Bona Malual and those who made it to the top. Gogrial North constituency has to won at home in the South in a genuine election, not Khartoum if one However, one has to boast about popularity.
A mentality of that kind must stop if Bona has to be accepted deep in the hearts of all southerners and in particular, those of us in Greater Bahr el Ghazal. Uncle Bona should know that he tried all and failed all. He marched with those of Mahgoub, Neimeri, Ismael Ahzari, and Sadik al Mahdi and in those eras and tenures Bona and the South suffered terribly. Disillusioned at how he has been outdone by younger and newer politicians in the SPLM who took their strides longer than he did; he goes back to his old ways of stern criticism no matter how far they are from his nose. And later he claims to be doing it in the name and for the good of South Sudan.
SPLM as a free political party has the right to oppose or accept anyone or any party. However, it has never planned any opposition against NCP in the CPA led Government but it has mainly objected some issues that NCP would want to impose on Southerners like the twists and turns in the referendum law, the delay of the border demarcation, unfair share of oil etc. NCP was persuaded by SPLM as a partner in government to attend the Juba Conference of all Sudan Political Parties. Instead, the NCP referred to this conference as an ‘Opposition Meeting’ and opted not to attend it. So, it was not SPLM’s mistake that NCP refused to attend the conference. And it is not an SPLM lie when it tells NCP that a National Consensus is much needed at such a time in Sudan and we should be there with all other parties to answer doubts and spell out the future together.
Uncle Bona should not play a game of hide and seek. It is clear he opposed and criticized the Juba Conference, as is always his habit, just in mere solidarity with NCP. Then again he rushes in to term the conference and the general conduct of SPLM as political lying. If SPLM alliance or closeness with Northern Opposition is a political lying, what then will Bona term his association with NCP? Why is it damaging to the CPA when it is SPLM that forge alliance with an opposition and is not the case when it NCP does it with parties that oppose SPLM like SPLM-DC, Bona’s SSDF and several militia groups around the South?
If Uncle Bona has accepted to be treated like a small child in the North, then it is up to him. He should not persuade others to accept his position in the way he views NCP. In a house, if a child breaks a plate the mother would shout at her and when it happens that is the mother that breaks the table then there is no word. That is the ideology that Bona wants NCP to enforce on SPLM to accept? I am sorry to say this but Uncle Bona Malual has grown so big and very old that he becomes so small in thinking. SPLM is right to refuse to be pushed down to the corner and get jabbed in the jaws while watching. It would even miss the meaning of the war we fought for two decades if we again come to accept second class citizenship, create bullies and obey their orders. And if these are the truths that Uncle Bona Malual wants to tell Southerners, then better the SPLM lies.
Taban Abel Aguek is a South Sudanese working in Rumbek, South Sudan. He can be reached through [email protected]