When did the SPLM turn separatist?

By Charles B. Kisanga

February 7, 2010 — In their desperate attempt to mislead Southern opinion, Salva Kiir and the clique around him are going around claiming that they are the champions of the separation of southern Sudan and accuse others of being the Unionists. Can they be believed?

Their track record speaks for itself. The following are some of their words and deeds.

1. Salva Kiir, in an SPLM gathering organized by his chum, Yasir Arman, in Khartoum in April 2008 said the following:

“We stand for the unity of Sudan. The practical proof for that is that the first bullet of the SPLA was shot at the separatists. It is the NCP which embraced the separatists when they ran away from us in the nineties.”

This is an unambiguous clear statement. When did Salva Kiir turn a separatist? If he did so what about those he shot dead for being separatists?

The separatists he referred to in his speech as having been embraced by the NCP are Dr. Riek Machar, Dr. Lam Akol, Cdr Arok Thon Arok, Cdr Kerubino Kuanyin Bol and others who signed the Khartoum and Fashoda Peace Agreements in 1997.

2. In a public rally in Kadugli, Southern Kordofan, which he visited on the 7th of July 2009, Salva Kiir said the following: –

“I will vote for the unity of Sudan in the referendum of 2011 and I will make the southerners vote likewise”.

This statement was seen on TV the same day and carried by the Khartoum press as a big headline the next day.

When did Salva Kiir turn a separatist?

3. In Cairo in 2008 when he met President Husni Mubarak, Salva Kiir said he was for the unity of the Nile Valley. You need not look into a map to conclude that the unity of the Nile Valley cannot be attained without realizing the unity between Southern and Northern Sudan? This means that Salva Kiir is a unionist par excellence.

When did Salva Kiir turn a separatist?

4. Salva Kiir and his coterie of Northerners in the SPLM have succeeded to forge an alliance with the Northern Opposition parties which are opposed to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). We all know that only through the CPA can the south choose legally to separate. It is only a midget that can be deceived that the alliance with the Northern Opposition is meant to serve the cause of the separation of the South. These are the old Northern politicians we all know the damage they have inflicted on the South.

5. It is the same alliance with the Northern Opposition parties that influenced Salva Kiir and his hand-picked Political Bureau to choose Yasir Saeed Arman, a Northerner, as its candidate for the President of the Republic. Was that choice of a Northerner by what is essentially a southern Movement to be its flag bearer out of keenness to separate the South?
6. On the other hand, the people they are accusing as being unionists have the following undeniable facts to their credit:

a). Dr. Lam Akol was the first Southern politician to bind the Government of Sudan to accepting the right of self-determination for Southern Sudan. This was in January 1992 when the Frankfurt Agreement was signed.

b). Again, it was Dr. Riek Machar and Dr. Lam Akol through the Khartoum and Fashoda Peace Agreements of 1997 that put this inalienable right of Southerners firmly in the Constitution of the Republic of Sudan 1998. This Constitution and the CPA were the basis of the current Interim Constitution of the Republic of Sudan 2005.

c). Furthermore, it was Dr. Lam Akol and his Southern colleagues in Khartoum who insisted that the “Libyan-Egyptian Initiative” of 12th July 2001 must conform to the IGADD (later, IGAD) mediated Declaration of Principles (DoP) of 20th July 1994 between the Government of the Republic of the Sudan (referred to as the GoS), the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Sudan People’s Liberation Army and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Sudan People’s Liberation Army-United (both referred to as the SPLM/A and SPLM/A-United, respectively). It is the DoP that constituted the basis for the negotiations between the SPLM/A and GoS which later on July 20th 2002 led to a great breakthrough in Machakos, Kenya, where the Mother protocol called the Machakos Protocol was signed and became the core reference of all the protocols and agreements that constituted the document known as the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) singed on 9th January 2005 in Nyayo Stadium, Nairobi. In contradistinction, the Egyptian-Libyan memorandum was intended to advance principles for dialogue in light of what they called the historical responsibility to preserve the unity, security and stability of Sudan.

d). When Senator John Danforth in 2002, pointed out to the SPLM what he saw as its contradictory position of being a unionist party and at the same time calling for self-determination that includes separation, the only thing the SPLM did was to produce the Khartoum and Fashoda Peace Agreements as evidence to the regime’s acceptance of the right of self-determination. In other words, there would have been no Machakos Protocol without the Khartoum and Fashoda Peace Agreements.

7. Salva Kiir and Co. are not genuine converts to the cause of the separation of the South. They are just using this desire among Southerners to bail themselves out of the mess they have thrown the South into in the last five years of mismanagement, and inept and weak leadership. It is like a drowning person trying to hang on a floating straw. This is the last throw of a desperate group.

8. Southerners will never believe Salva Kiir and the clique around him even if they try to hoodwink the people that they have got converted into separatists as they pretend to sing the referendum-for-independence song, thinking that they will reap the fruits of what they had not sweated for and what they have been pruning without remorse in the past.

Eng. Charles B. Kisanga, is the Secretary General of SPLM-DC, he is reachable at [email protected]