لا خير فينا ان لم نقلها. Parek Madout on Arman's withdrawal

Quote: Analysis - Bargaining with NCP at any cost is a threat to southern Sudan referendum (Washington DC) - The SPLM’s decision to withdraw their Presidential candidate from the race, and boycott the elections in Darfur precipitated a whole lot of confusion and controversy. Initial assessments from different quarters in the Sudanese political scene read the decision from their own lenses that are clouded by their own biases and stakes in this troubled phase in the history of Sudan. The SPLM arrived at these juncture buffeted by many competing external interests, and with a significant diversity of opinion within its leadership about what strategically optimal positions it should take. The CPA enshrined at its core the right of the people of Southern Sudan to self determination, to be exercised through an internationally observed plebiscite. For many members of the SPLM, this right is sacrosanct and must be protected and ensured at any price. However, the CPA also had at the core of its letter and spirit a mandate to effect a transparent and constitutional reform process in the whole of the country towards a democratic system of governance. This reform or transformation needed to happen in lockstep with exhaustively detailed steps that might well lead to the emergence of a separate state in Southern. These artificially distinct but inherently connected processes are the fundamental tension in this landmark peace agreement called the CPA. The NCP was clearly counting on the SPLM being a docile lip-serving player in the democratic transformation arena, compelled as it is by the clamor for ensuring that the referendum occurs unimpeded by its core constituency in Southern Sudan. The leadership of the SPLM however also understood the perennial truth that keeping the NCP honest as an interlocutor and compelling it to honor the agreement would not be easy unless the very core interests of its leadership are tested. The fundamental interest of that ruling clique is now centered entirely on clinging to power at all costs, a situation exacerbated further by the ICC indictments of President Omer Al-Bashir. The SPLM represented a mortal threat to the NCP’s project of re-engineering itself as a legitimate ruling majority by daring to lead a moribund opposition into a serious alliance around the basic objective of a free and fair election. The exercise of that threat has always had its own vocal detractors within the Movement and among its political opponents. These people feel that challenging the NCP’s hold on the North was a reckless fool’s errand that will only endanger the CPA’s most cherished prize for Southern Sudanese, and that is the referendum. When the SPLM daringly forwarded Yasir Arman as their candidate against the sitting President, the NCP was genuinely flummoxed and began to really see the danger that even a losing candidacy by the SPLM candidate would mean for its core interest. Even if the SPLM candidate were to ultimately lose the election, the energized support base would have been the core foundation for a serious post-referendum progressive opposition to the Islamists in the North. The supposedly airtight plans to win the elections by all means were suddenly threatened by the emergence of a cohesive opposition coalition led by the SPLM and a public that was gradually beginning to have faith in the possibility of dethroning the two decade thugocracy of the NCP. The NCP’s initial covert appeals and inducements to the SPLM to withdraw Yasir Arman and distance itself from the Northern Opposition did not bear fruit, so a more explicit threat had to be deployed. The preemptive campaign pronouncements by president Omer AlBashir that if the SPLM demanded any delaying of the election, he would ensure a similar delay or even denial of the referendum vote were partly about the fear of the calls for delay to allow election process reforms by the Northern opposition and some in the SPLM. The statements and well-placed threats of a coup by the army to derail the CPA were however mostly about the SPLM contesting of the Presidency and were part of a concerted pressure campaign against the SPLM leadership to expeditiously remove the threat brought about by the candidacy of Yasir Arman. The explicit threat paid its due rewards, because the SPLM leadership ultimately calculated that the withdrawal of Yasir Arman and the subsequent disruption of the political alliance with the opposition was a price worth paying for the guarantee that the referendum would not be impeded by the NCP. The question that we must all ponder is whether that gamble is strategically optimal for the South, assuming that an orderly referendum leading to separation was the sole objective. Moreover, will the SPLM be in a sufficiently strong position to politically pressure the NCP to make good on its obligations under this Faustian bargain after the polls in April. There is a glaring reality that we should all be very familiar with by now. The NCP will not guarantee the orderly exercise of the referendum and subsequent separation of the South unless it was in a sufficiently weakened position in the North. The intentionally delayed implementation of many provisions of the accord has proven that point over and over again, and we have the epic struggle over the referendum law as a recent example of NCP backtracking and dishonesty. The SPLM’s struggle for political reform and democratization in the North is organically connected to the objective of allowing the people of Southern Sudan the right to once and for all determine their destiny within Sudan. Separating the two and pitting them as competing interests is a great folly that will come back to haunt the core advocates of building a nation-state in Southern Sudan. Here is a decidedly gloomy but realistic snapshot of the political calculus in Sudan after the elections in April. The NCP will be back with Omer AlBashir re-elected to a new 5-year term, a solid majority in the national parliament and with the SPLM barely retaining a one-third presence in the legislature in Khartoum. The NCP would essentially ignore the legislative results and bring in the DUP, UMMA, some elements of the PCP and Southern opponents of the SPLM like SPLM-DC and SSDF into a coalition government dominated by the NCP with token representation by the SPLM. The SPLM would have a severely handicapped presence in the national executive beyond the sole seat of Chairman Salva Kiir in the Presidency. Notwithstanding its likely majority control in the South, the SPLM would be in a very weak position negotiating post-referendum issues with the suddenly united Northern political apparatus, and will even be in a tougher spot beating back procedural roadblocks placed by the NCP on the referendum vote. The NCP would not have anymore need to make reasonable concessions to the South, and will even be buttressed by a flaky international community that is always willing to lean on weaker parties to accept bad bargains. The irony would then be realized by all – that in the mad push to pay whatever price for the promise of an orderly referendum, the biggest advocates of Southern Nationalism may be the biggest cause of its delay or ultimate demise.