Pagan Amum denies reports on dissolution of SPLM’s Liberation Council

By Muhammad Osman

October 29, 2010 (NAIROBI) – The SPLM’s secretary-general Pagan Amum has categorically denied the veracity of reports published on Friday by pro-government newspapers in north Sudan about the dissolution of the SPLM’s National Liberation Council (NLC), saying the reports were “false”.

Speaking over the phone to Sudan Tribune yesterday, Amum said that the NLC had not been dissolved and that media reports suggesting otherwise were “false and not true.”

Amum, whose party rules south Sudan, explained that the NLC is the highest authority in the SPLM and that a decision to dissolve it can only be taken by the SPLM’s general-convention next scheduled for 2013.

Some pro-government newspapers in north Sudan reported on Friday that the SPLM, had decided to dissolve its Liberation Council and supplant it with a 100-member council that includes only four northerners.

The NLC is composed of 250 members elected by the SPLM’s general convention. The council comprises representatives from the ten southern states as well as representatives from the SPLM’s northern sector. It also elects members of the SPLM’s politburo and its secretariat.

Repeated delays in holding the NLC meeting gave rise to rampant speculations that the meeting was being deliberately delayed for fears of confrontation with members of the SPLM’s northern sector who are said to be disgruntled with the SPLM’s apparent move towards secession.

But Amum has attributed the delays to the fact that senior SPLM members are engaged in negotiations with the north over issues of the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), south Sudan referendum and the situation in the oil-producing area of Abyei.

Asked about the position of the SPLM on the issue of unity verses secession, Amum answered that the SPLM’s politburo concluded that the parties to the CPA did not agree on a national program to render unity attractive. However, he later added that this does not necessarily mean that the SPLM’s official position is in favor of secession.

Pagan Amum further expressed confidence that the great majority of southerners are favoring secession.

North and south Sudan fought decades of civil war which ended in 2005 when the two sides signed the CPA. The CPA gave the south greater autonomy with the opportunity to gain full independence in a referendum vote scheduled for January 2011.

(ST)