South Sudanese vice president ready to offer positions to rebel leader
June 16, 2015 (NAIROBI) – South Sudan’s incumbent vice president, James Wani Igga, has reportedly agreed to offer both his government’s executive and party positions to the rebel leader, Riek Machar, earning praises that he had been a peace lover who always bought Machar back with position.
Igga would get back to his previous pre-December 2013 position as second deputy chairman of the party and also second vice president in government per provisions of the SPLM constitution on leadership hierarchy.
The armed opposition leader was the vice president in government until June 2013 when he fell out with president Salva Kiir reportedly due to his call for internal reforms in the ruling party and in government, which earned him a dismissal decree. He was also dismissed from the position as party first chairman after the December 2013 crisis, subsequently replacing him with Igga in both government and party positions.
In the past one year of peace negotiations on power-sharing in Addis Ababa, Igga vowed not to again step down for Machar like he allegedly did in 2002 during 21 years of war with Sudan when the previously disintegrated SPLM in 1991 between Machar and late John Garang reunified its ranks and file in Nairobi, Kenya, under the leadership of its founder, late Garang.
However, sources revealed to Sudan Tribune that Igga had last week expressed willingness to let go the position for Machar on condition that the speaker of national parliament became an Equatorian.
“Vice president Wani Igga always buys back Riek Machar with his positions. He has now agreed again to let him reoccupy his two positions so that peace prevails,” the source alleged on condition of anonymity.
Also one of the SPLM former detainees officials who travelled to the South Sudanese capital, Juba, last week, for talks with the government on party reunification confirmed to The East African this week that Igga was willing to step down for Machar.
“Mr Wani has been very magnanimous and is a lover of peace. That is why he gave up the position of the SPLM second deputy chairman to Dr Machar in 2002, when the former vice-president joined the movement. He still holds that people should not continue dying because of a position,” said Cirino Hiteng.
IGGA POSITION NOT TAKEN
SPLM opposition faction led by Machar however dismissed the argument as “nonsensical” saying the rebel leader had never taken the position of James Wani Igga.
“Yes, we have been hearing these nonsensical and misleading arguments. Comrade Dr. Riek Machar has never in history taken the position of comrade James Wani and he will not do so because this will be a self-demotion,” Machar’s spokesman, James Gatdet Dak, told Sudan Tribune in response to the allegations.
“How would a senior leader choose to take the lower position of his junior if the idea is to reinstate to pre-crisis positions? This does not make sense and nobody asked for it,” he said.
Dak claimed that Machar was always senior to Igga whether in historical SPLM since formation in 1983 or in government since formation in 2005, saying the first SPLM merger or reunification in 2002 was to restore the historical hierarchy of the movement in which Machar was senior as number three at the time after late John Garang and incumbent president Salva Kiir.
He further explained the circumstances which led to the power-sharing in the reunified leadership of the movement on 6 January 2002, saying the leaders were simply reinstated to their respective positions they held prior to 1991 split.
“If people referred back to 2002 leadership merger agreement, it was based on the understanding of reinstating historical party leadership to their pre-1991 positions of the political military high command. This was how late Dr. John Garang retained his position as chairman and commander-in-chief, and Salva Kiir became first vice chairman,” he further claimed.
“Dr. Riek Machar rightfully took the third position as the next in the hierarchy. This was after the first debate to merge the two SPLM factions as equals was abandoned. This first proposal was for either late Dr. Garang or Dr. Machar to chair the reunified movement and the other automatically became the first vice chairman.”
He said the debate finally boiled down to reinstating the historical leadership when Salva Kiir refused to give the second position to Riek Machar with the argument that the former was historically senior to the latter in the movement’s original leadership hierarchy.
He further explained it was also agreed in the document that an election for new party top leadership would be conducted during a second national convention three months after the Nairobi merger agreement in 2002, which he said did not happen.
Dak said in the same current situation if there was to be an agreement to reinstate leadership per a peace agreement, Machar would be going back to his former position, but not taking Igga’s hierarchical position.
He said it would have been the other way around if Igga took Machar’s position or the position of president Kiir.
The rebel leader’s spokesman further challenged that people who made such allegations that Igga gave his position to Machar were either ignorant of the terms of such agreements or consciously trying to drag Equatorians into falsely believing that their “so-called position” was always snatched by somebody.
He said Equatorians had the right to occupy any position including the party chairmanship and president, and not condemned to the position of deputy. He added that if president Kiir stepped down for Igga the rebels would have equally recognized him as “peace-partner-president of the regime in Juba until a final peace agreement says otherwise.”
The East African regional bloc, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), has proposed a power-sharing in a draft final peace agreement to end the 18-month long civil war between president Kiir and his former deputy Machar.
The agreement proposed to maintain Kiir as interim president during a 30-month long transitional period with Machar reinstated as his first vice president.IGAD is yet to announce a date for resumption of the talks in Addis Ababa where the warring parties are expected to officially present their respective responses to the proposal.
(ST)