SPLM Defeats Southerners’ Aspirations

By: Helen Andrew

After the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) which ended the longest civil war in the continent, southern Sudanese in particular were very optimistic that they will be compensated over all the war years through sustainable development in the South.

The big amounts of monthly oil revenues siphoned for the Southern Sudan were quite enough to reconstruct the whole South and bring dividends to its people.
But unfortunately Southerners are disappointed because there is no development instead there is a constant deliveries of weapons whose shipment has become a scandal of the year. Millions of dollars supposed to be invested in development projects are spent to buy heavy arms like tanks.

Southern Sudanese people do not want to go back to war because they have tasted its sufferings during the 21-years long civil war. They need roads, schools, hospitals and universities to be constructed, and above all that promotion of brotherly relations with their brothers and sisters in the North.

By involving in armament scandal, the SPLM has defeated its people’s aspirations to lead a happy life because most of the people in the South thought that the signature of the CPA means commitment to peace and not preparation for another round of war. What can the SPLM say about rearmament if it is not preparation for another round of war?

  Those who are keen over peace are worried that this arm shipment is but only one of other shipments which nobody knows about because this particular one was discovered by mere accident of Somali pirates’ action. Otherwise who can tell what might have been going on in the recent past? The SPLA can no longer deny that it is not involved in army shipment through Mombassa Port as this has been documented in the ship’s manifest in addition to the Juba Airport cargo of caches of arms.

Indeed what is worrying is that this dangerous shipment might be only the top of the iceberg who knows what id covered by water!

We ask: How many weapons deals has SPLA entered before this one without the knowledge of others?

  Logically we can say that big numbers of weapons have entered Southern Sudan due to the absence of transparency and the corruption over the oil revenues along with the poverty overwhelming Southern Sudan villages and cities.
If there is a real democratic practice, Southern Sudan Legislative Assembly should call for an emergency meeting to discuss the GoSS justifications about the news of this scandal which spread all over the world.

* But instead of that another scandal emerged as news reports said that the UN Mission in Juba discovered an Ethiopian military aircraft boarding weapons a matter that puts SPLM under GoSS in an embarrassment.

* It is known that the CPA’s security arrangements protocols bans SPLA weapons supplying unless that is approved by the joint defence council with the recognition of UN mission and the joint military committee.

* What is astonishing is the Foreign Minister statements over the recent incident of the Ethiopian aircraft in which he affirmed that SPLA has nothing to do with the weapons held in the aircraft considering that as a plot linked with the pirates’ held shipment at the time when news reports related American diplomats and US army officials as believing that the weapons on board of the held ship were in its way to Southern Sudan.