The Lamophobia and scaremongering tactics

By Deng Bachech

November 1, 2009 — It’s about an election time, and a fierce political campaign amongst competing parties has begun. For better or worse, politicians will engage in cheap politics character assassinating the personalities of their opponents and say anything under the sun about them and their political platforms. The game has already begun, though. Some political parties, mainly the ruling ones, are feeling the heat of being stripped of power and are now looking for scapegoats to blame on anything they think would make them look good and likable, and get re-elected, if at all they were elected in the first place. And in particular, the SPLM Party has already found its black sheep to blame, that’s SPLM-DC and its leader Dr. Lam Akol Ajawin. There two fundamental factors in play that need the readers to know: (1) The fear of Dr. Lam Akol’s vast popularity, political experience, intelligence and wisdom, sound judgement and knowledge about the history of SPLM/A from A to Z, as an insider, irritates the doomed leadership of Kiir Mayardit—this factor is what I termed as Lamophobia; and (2) the 1991 Nasir Declaration and its aftermaths—a factor that often used to destroy Dr. Lam’s political career and reputation as well as the relevance of the SPLM-DC. The two factors are, however, intermingled.

Yesterday I wrote a piece about much of the mistakes and failures of the SPLM and why I think they are not a party worthy of a praise or crowned with leadership in the South, let alone the whole Sudan. But today I will concentrate heavily on their “weapons of destruction” and distraction—such as blame game, scaremongering, denial, deceit, and confusion. So I am here to shed light on their claims and bring the real truths to the surface so that people can have a better opportunity to judge for themselves.

The Lamophobia

On October 27, 2009, The Citizen newspaper ran a headline: “SPLM Insists Lam has Militia” calling him a “renegade”. And that “they [SPLM] have information that Lam Akol is building militias, which legally bars him from contesting in any election”. This statement came from none other than SPLM Deputy Chairman and Speak of the Government of Southern Sudan Legislative Assembly (SSLA), Mr. Wani Igga, speaking while on a campaign trail touring northern states. After a week, Kiir made the same allegations that SPLM-DC was “formed not to promote, but to destroy the south and image of its government.” I wonder what ‘image’ that His Excellency Dr. Kiir Mayardit was talking about, if not simply a bad publicity and repugnant scaremongering tactics. We all know the image of the government is already destroyed beyond repair by corruption, ineffectiveness, internal struggles and tribalism. What does he think left to be destroyed? As if his first scare tactic wasn’t enough to convince people, “baba” Wani Igga echoed the same tune that ‘it is important for Lam to pull out from militia groups’ formation to stand for election, according to National Elections ACT provision,” because the “NEA [provision] is clear that: No political party should have military wing.” And that if SPLM-DC is a legitimate political party, the ‘SPLM will ensure freedom of expression, protections and movement for any political party in southern Sudan”. Quite fascinating! You see, these people are really interesting and very funny to write about if one is a curious journalist or writer looking always for political nonsense, inconsistencies and contradictions to report.

Look, it was not long ago when a certain commander-administrator in the Office of President’s Special Branch—(a Security Organ)—issued a statement dated 21/09/2009 demanding the closure of SPLM-DC office in Wau, Western Bahr el Gazal state “with immediate effect on 24/09/2009” with a claim that the angry ‘SPLM Youth would harm SPLM-DC’ members”. Here if you connect the dots, you can’t fail to figure out their inconsistencies and contradictions. Legally and logically, if their intention was a matter of protecting the SPLM-DC members, who might not be the angry mob themselves, why not didn’t they apprehend the culprits (SPLM Youth) who demonstrated their ill-intentions to cause harm to innocent people and state security instead of punishing the victims? Second, what was the logic behind Wani Igga’s statement that “‘SPLM will ensure freedom of expression, protections and movement for any political party in southern Sudan” when the same office of the [SPLM] President closed down the office of a peaceful political party that poses no danger to state security? How ridiculous is that hypocritical justice.

Again as if their weapons of mass destruction had not run out of bullets to shower on SPLM-DC, The Citizen (on the 22nd of October, 2009) ran another headline: ‘Gier: We’re Watching SPLM-DC Militias”, that SPM-DC indeed has military wing. While briefing foreign dignitaries, ministers close to Kiir such as Gier Chuang, Luka Biong and Nhial Deng Nhial agreed that they “have a lot of information about it. We are trying our best to address the situation.” And that “they have discovered some members of the SPLM-DC who are in the National Assembly on the SPLM ticket”. In fact, there are no proofs that SPLM-DC has army nor are there any of their PMs in the National Assembly who support SPLM-DC behind closed doors. The only known fact is that: (1) they want to scare any liberal-minded SPLM PM in the assembly to shut up; (2) to deny their incompetence to contain the raging insecurity in the South; and (3) to deceive and confuse the general public from knowing the truth.

The 1991 Nasir Declaration and Its Aftermaths

A lot of talks and writings have been going on for quite a long time about the 1991 split and its consequences. And the soft targets of the split have always been Dr. Lam Akol Ajawin and Dr. Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon, being the two leaders who engineered the split of the SPLM into factions. However, I will not go into much details of why split happened, because if I dig deeper and expose all causes that would rekindle our bad memories and self-inflicted horrors of the liberation war we did unto ourselves more than the enemy did. And this would affect our unity as Southerners. Let bygone be bygone!

Yet, to protect the image and reputation of our dear doctors, although they are not at present in the same party, am here to make some few comments on their heroism for their attempts to inject democratic medicine in the system of the SPLM/A to keep it alive until these days. Especially their extraordinary work on the “the right to self-determination” and introduction of liberal democracy into SPLM/A’s revised manifesto (1994), which was unheard since 1983 although this never came about without consequences. But the real cause of the split was not thirst for “power” as some people wrongly interpreted to discredit the heroic achievements of our leaders (Dr. Riek and Dr. Lam) but it was because of: (1) Dr. Garang’s leadership ambitions; (2) the unclarity of both political and military strategy and methods to achieve movement’s goal; and (3) human rights abuses within the movement. Like I said earlier, I am not interested in going much into details about what went wrong in the movement by then which later provoked the Nasir Declaration since facts are already there registered in books and in our memories.

In conclusion, I caution the SPLM scaremongers and sycophants to find other ways to discredit and attack SPLM-DC, mainly its political platforms, and not to resort to cheap politics of character assassinating Dr. Lam’s integrity, credibility and personality, otherwise all hell will break loose in Southern Sudan before we reach our freedom. So let’s focus more on the present and the future direction of our nation, even though we differ on how to achieve our goals (justice, equality, freedom and democracy). The deciders are the electorate.

The author is an SPLM-DC Assistant Secretary for External Affairs, Khartoum. Always look for The Democrat newspaper editions where his commentaries and opinions appear on his column “The Discourse Corner”. He can be reached at [email protected].