Articles and Analysies
Is The Marriage Over Between CPA Partners? By: Luk Kuth Dak, USA
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Oct 13, 2009 - 12:14:18 AM

Is The Marriage Over Between CPA Partners?

By: Luk Kuth Dak , USA

By all indications, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and National Congress Party NCP are fated and destined for doom in their relations particularly on matters related to the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). Apparently, NCP is in a nauseating mood to back off from its obligations towards the CPA.

Day by day, their hard-liners simultaneously have literally been barking and disgorging insults and threats, to make the 2011 referendum more difficult, if not impossible for Southerners who are yearning for independence and self-determination.

According to Sudan Tribune (ST), one of the regime’s most powerful hardliners, the speaker of the National Assembly (NA), Ahmad Ibrahim Al Tahir, was quoted as saying that, his Parliament will push the referendum law to vote. “The parliament has run out of patience with the long dragging dispute over the law, he said.” He went on to add: “The legislative assembly is empowered to bypass the executive branch and joint political commissions of both parties and draft its own version of the referendum bill."

Does it get any bizarre than that? The answer is yes. Under this bizarre regime, anything and everything is sure possible. But of course, any Southerner with average memories certainly recalls that vapid statement he made only a month or so ago. “We’re going to make referendum difficult,” he said.

Subsequently, his words were also repeated by the racist trio: Muhammad Mandour Al Mahedi, Mustafa Osman and Nafi Ali Nafi, to name a few. However, it's clear that the Speaker is basically re-affirming the position his party has been trying to hide for far too long. The whole thing is a plot to pass the NCP's version, which calls for a 90 per cent to determine the referendum outcome, by their overwhelming hand-picked majority in the so-called National Assembly.

And so, while we can rarely anticipate and can never control how others react to any particular situation, it baffles me that there seems to be no public anger or outrage in South Sudan, over these tangible forms of belligerence and violations.

Quite frankly, I do not understand the concept behind the silence from those we deem would be most likely to support any move to protest (peacefully) against such calculated attempts to exterminate the CPA. But could it be due to the fact that, the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the other South Sudan’s political parties (all of whom are silent about the NIF violations) did not take the initiative to stop all these lunacy by NCP?

If so, then, the SPLM leadership must now begin to mobilize and encourage the public to take to the streets in protest of what seems to be the collapse of one of the most important accords in Sudan ’s history.

For example, if the African-Americans behaved the way we are handling our oppressors today, President Barack Obama (whom I voted for) would have never been in the Oval Office. But because the Negroes from all US states under the leadership of committed men and women headed by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. did an extraordinary job to protest the injustices that had engulfed the black community. Those peaceful (non-violent) protests were met with vicious dogs, water hoses and killings.

But just when the oppressors thought the movement was over, Dr. King appears in yet another destination, mobilizing the black folks, and telling them that, “We are on the move now, and we cannot afford to turn back. We are on our way to the Promised Land, he said.”

Hence, South Sudan has produced some great public figures who can do just what Dr. King did for his people in the United States of America . But where are they now when our people needed them the most? Of course, President Salva Kiir, a man with tremendous gifts of bravery, has done an extraodinary job in facing it off with Al Basher and Ali Taha. But the burning question: Is it a “One-man” show? And can he possibly do it alone? The answer is no, of course.

So, unless liberating South becomes every Southerner's priority, all that we have gained, will most certainly be lost in a blink of an eye, and that’s not an option.

Final Thought.

Those who are thinking that unity is achievable should look no further than the position taken by the so-called Sudan National Television boycotting of the Juba conference, simply because the NIF/NCP did not participate in the conference. The question now is, how could such conduct be tolerated from a public- funded department bearing the name “National?”

We need to be truthful to ourselves and say out loud: No unity without equality.