South Sudanese rebels call on president Kiir to stand down from SPLM leadership
January 23, 2015 (NAIROBI) – South Sudan’s armed opposition faction of the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement (SPLM-IO) under the leadership of former vice president, Riek Machar, said it was time for president Salva Kiir to step down from the leadership of the ruling party following his admission of wrong doing in the recent Arusha agreement on reunification.
“Salva Kiir has admitted he is the cause of the current crisis. If you carefully read the provisions of the agreement on the reunification of the SPLM, you will find that he has condemned himself for unnecessarily plunging the country into this senseless war,” Machar’s spokesperson, James Gatdet Dak, told Sudan Tribune on Friday.
The agreement, he explained, “recognised, acknowledged and accepted” majority of the core reform issues which “Kiir and his group initially resisted” and led to the internal conflict within the ruling SPLM party.
He said the agreement also acknowledged the need to review the basic documents which were undemocratically passed by president Kiir’s group amid a walkout by Machar’s led reformists on 14 December 2013, a day before “president Kiir reacted violently.”
“He violently resisted reforms which he has now acknowledged after the irreparable damage is already done. The best thing he can do is quit. He should be patriotic enough to negotiate himself out of this failed leadership,” he said.
The rebel leader’s spokesman pointed out that the South Sudanese president in the Arusha agreement had admitted under his leadership the party had lost vision and direction and consequently failed to genuinely institutionalize and democratize the exercise of power in the party and this led to the current crisis.
The new agreement provided for the SPLM to redefine and implement its vision, formulate and provide policies and programmes to be implemented by its government with the aim of “achieving a democratic developmental state.”
The agreement called for introduction and implementation of reforms in various political, security, economic and public service sectors in order to save the party and the country from further “decay”.
The document also calls on the leadership of the ruling party to apologise to the people of South Sudan for the 15 December crisis.
“The leadership of SPLM/SPLA therefore reiterates the call on Salva Kiir to step down after he has now rightly accepted his failures,” he said.
President Kiir, he added, is called upon to rise above his personal or group ambitions and save the nation by stepping aside and end the war.
MACHAR IN KENYA
The top opposition leader, Machar, he said, who is currently in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, since Thursday met president Uhuru Kenya at the State House on Friday and discussed issues pertaining to the peace process in South Sudan.
The rebel leader also briefed SPLM-IO officials in the Kenyan capital on the contents of the Arusha agreement.
Further briefings will be conducted to the civil and military leaderships on the ground.
Dak dismissed voices from the rebel supporters who condemned the agreement in the social media, saying their premature reaction was based on assumption that president Kiir was going to be endorsed to continue as the chairman of the party.
Talks, he clarified, will continue in Arusha and Addis Ababa, respectively, on many other details including the fate of leadership in both the party and government.
(ST)