Top member of Sudan’s ruling NCP resigns joins southern Sudan’s SPLM
October 12, 2010 (JUBA) – A senior member of Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party (NCP) has quit over its alleged abuse and misconduct of power towards southern Sudan.
Maj. Gen. Alison Manani Magaya and 60 NCP members announced they had joined the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), the former rebels who govern southern Sudan, at a press conference on Tuesday.
Magaya is a former minister in the Government of National Unity (GoNU), which was established in 2005 by the NCP to share power with the SPLM after a peace deal signed the same year.
“Today I announce that I am resigning as a member of NCP. Now I announce I am joining SPLM,” Magaya said at the press conference organized at the offices of the SPLM Southern Sector in the regional capital Juba.
Magaya had been a member of the NCP, who have ruled Sudan since a coup in 1989, for 21 years.
“We see the abuse of power in the use of the federal institutions to harass, persecute and deny southerners the right to exist,” he told Sudan Tribune.
Some in the south see Magaya’s defection was a big blow to the NCP.
Speaking at the press conference Magaya said, “I was in the National Congress Party for the mission and that mission was to do with the southern problem to work for peace and the political settlement of the southern conflict and this is what we did until the CPA come in 2005.”
He said the “time has come when one has realized that there is a change of mode in the circle of the leadership of NCP towards the south this change in altitude is not going to help the process – the process of the implementation of the CPA – it will not also help to maintain southerners in the NCP because it has become very discouraging for many of the southerners who are in NCP because all of you are aware of the difficulties face in the implementation of the CPA.”
The tone that the NCP has started to use to has become ”unbearable” for southerners to listen and made him doubt southerners would get fair treatment if the south secedes Magaya said.
The exit of Magaya from the NCP has been well received in Western Equatoria state (WES) where Magaya comes from.
Western Equatoria’s governor, Col. Bangasi Joseph Bakosoro said, on behalf of the state government, that he is extremely happy to welcome the sons and daughters of the state to join the SPLM after so many years.
He called upon the other southern Sudanese from Western Equatoria who are still in other political parties “to follow suit as Sudan is marching towards making history in Jan 2011 a year that may see self determination exercise on either to remain slaves or to become a free and independent southern Sudan.”
Bakosoro said that, “during this critical moment ahead of [us], people should be in one boat in order to take lifelong decision to determine the future generations.”
The governor congratulated the SPLM leadership for the warm welcome given to politicians who have rejoined the SPLM after they had been members of other political parties.
Magaya is the second senior politician from Western Equatoria to join the SPLM in recent months.
In July Charles Kisanga then the deputy chairman and secretary general of SPLM-DC, a breakaway party from the SPLM, rejoined the southern movement.
Changing allegiances and political parties is note new in southern Sudanese politics. Lam Akol who broke away from the SPLM in June 2009 to form SPLM-Democratic Change was one of the southern leaders who split from the SPLM in 1991 during the north-south civil war along with Riek Machar.
Both rejoined the SPLM before the 2005 peace deal that ended the conflict.
Machar became vice president of the semi-autonomous region after the death of the SPLM’s leader John Garang in a helicopter crash in August 2005. Akol served in the national government minister for foreign affairs before removed by the SPLM.
In June 2009 Akol broke away from the SPLM again to form SPLM-DC to contest April’s elections.
Salva Kiir who succeeded Garang as the leader of the SPLM and the southern army the SPLA, and has held the positions of First Vice President of Sudan and President of the government of southern since 2005, met Akol for talks on 9 October.
(ST)