Hard choices by SPLM

By Zechariah Manyok Biar

October 27, 2009 — The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement(SPLM) with other opposition parties, including opposition parties from Northern Sudan, have decided to boycott the current parliamentary session in the Government of National Unity in Sudan to put pressure on the National Congress Party to change security law that remains a threat to democratic transformation in Sudan. SPLM is even now threatening to boycott budget session for 2010. SPLM is also reported to have “disowned two third voters turnout required for South [secession] from North saying simple majority of participants at the referendum should determine the fate of southern Sudan” (Sudan Tribune, October 26, 2009). There are also rumors that SPLM Secretary General Pagan Amum will be part of the referendum bill negotiating team this time. Hard choices indeed!

I have never been a pessimist and I will never be. It would be ridiculous for me to think that the ongoing boycotting of the parliament of national Unity Government by the SPLM is meant to abrogate the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and referendum bill. But there are some questions that I am yet to answer. What are the bases for SPLM’s rejection of the just agreed up referendum bill? How would the continued boycotting of the parliament achieve SPLM and South Sudan’s goal?

In a strategic planning, the first questions that are asked include the strengths and the weaknesses of a point or a situation. If the strengths are more than weaknesses, then the plan is designed with few reservations. But if the weaknesses are more than strengths, then a strategy is designed to eliminate some of the weaknesses before any positive plan is designed.

When I looked into the weak points for South Sudan in the agreement that Ali Osman Taha and Dr. Riek Machar recently arrived at for the referendum bill, I found that the weaknesses for Southerners are minimal in the real sense of the word.

The two thirds majority that is needed for the quorum of the registered referendum voters in the South might be difficult to achieve, but I do not see it as a threat. The only way that people rig results is from the ballot boxes, not from the gathering of people. The threat to people’s gathering can easily be detected.

The census might have planted a fear in SPLM that South Sudanese cannot turn up for important national activities. That is true. But people who are not educated in South Sudan believe that census is meant for paying of taxes. So they can avoid census intentionally in what they believe as their benefit. But nobody in the South would think that voting for referendum is a bad idea, unless the informed politicians in the South are not serious to inform people about the day that the referendum will be conducted.

The other thing is that the 66% required for the quorum is for those who have registered to vote. If a Southerner is completely naive about the importance of voting during the referendum, then he or she will not even bother to register, making him or her not part of the 66% required for validity of the referendum.

The importance of referendum exercise for Southerners lies in the fact that almost every family had lost somebody they loved during the war. If these people are told that the referendum is the final decision for what took the lives of their loved ones, then how will they not turn up? If the problem is accessibility, then why would the referendum committee not take ballot boxes to villages where people can vote less than ten minutes walk from their houses?

The way that NCP may reduce the turn up would be to threaten Southerners who live in the North not to turn up or cause insecurity in the South for everybody to stay in their house or on the run. Would that not be invisible? Is that not the real time SPLM would boycott the referendum with clear evidence that the international community will support? The next conduct of the referendum that is provided for in the bill would not be done at that time unless all the people who have registered are tracked down and asked why they never turned up.

The other possibility for the rigging of turn up, if we can call it that way, would be in the Diaspora. But the Diaspora agreed upon by the parties in the referendum bill are countries that Sudan government has no control over in any way, unless these countries are the ones aiming at the unity of Sudan and want to rig the referendum in favor of unity. But will USA, Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Kenya, and Uganda in which millions of South Sudanese live rig the referendum in favor of the unity of Sudan against the will of Southerners?

SPLM is probably threatened by some of South Sudan political parties who think that 66% quorum is a bad idea. But would SPLM operate at the level of impulse or would it calculate its decisions as the sole guarantor of CPA?

Our professor of Administration and Planning always tells us this: “If you think the aim of demonstration is to make you feel good, then never do it.” National decisions are not based on what will make people feel good or feel accepted by majority, they are based on a very calculated strategy and an informed decision about other situations resembling your situation.

Research has shown that parliamentary boycott achieves very little changes. In 2005, Georgian opposition lawmakers admitted that their boycott of parliamentary sessions failed to bring about any tangible results http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=12436.

In 2008, Azerbaijani opposition presidential candidate Eldar Namazov opposed opposition parties’ boycott strategy, saying that it would accomplish nothing http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav060908a.shtml.

These are few examples among many examples that show how ineffective parliamentary vote is. SPLM should find other ways of putting pressure on the NCP without boycotting parliamentary sessions, because that would give NCP reasons to pass bad laws without SPLM consent, as it is done in other places.

I also think that the idea of including SPLM SG Pagan Amum in a negotiating team would not be a wise idea because Northerners have already taken Pagan as their enemy number one. The presence of Pagan in SPLM negotiating team will make the team members of NCP defensive, making it hard for the two parties to reach a compromise.

On the other hand, Pagan may join the group in making a compromise that he was not sent for, disappointing those who sent him. Why involved a defender of SPLM to a job that will complicate his talent and achieve little?

The boycott of parliament sounds good because it is meant to force the NCP transform. But is it realistic that NCP will transform at this time when they clearly know that the South will leave in 2011? Would it not have been better for all the political parties to join hands and vote against the bill they do not want the parliament to pass? How would the NCP claim the legitimacy of the law that all the political parties rejected in Sudan, if at all NCP aim at fairness? Are decisions in Sudan based on democratic majority today or are they based on the agreement of CPA partners?

I am not yet sure of whether the decisions that the SPLM is now taking will produce any good results or not, but my humble advice to SPLM is that it should calculate its decisions at this time because Sudan has reached its critical moment that boycotting of parliamentary sessions is likely going to produce little impacts.

Zechariah Manyok Biar is a graduate student at Abilene Christian University, Texas, USA. He is pursuing a Master of Arts in Christian Ministry and a Master of Science in Social Work, specializing in Administration and Planning. For comments, contact him at email: [email protected]