SPLM Call for Mass Demonstration is a Joke

By Dr. James Okuk

On Monday, October 12, 2009, the leader of the SPLM caucus in the Sudan National Parliament in Khartoum presented a Memo to the Speaker of National Assembly. The Memo demanded withing a week the tabling of: 1) Referendum bill for self -Determination of the People of Southern Sudan; 2) Security Laws; 3) Popular consultation for the People of Southern Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan; and 4) Self-Determination for the People of Abyie.

Not only this but the Memo was followed by an ultimatum that the SPLM MPs are going to boycott the sittings in the Parliament if their demand is not answered before the one week-deadline. Also the SPLM party is going to organize for peaceful demonstrations all over the streets of the Sudan on Monday, October 19, 2009. Thus, the SPLM Secretariat kindly asks all the members and friends to join the struggle in the form of the afore-mentioned demonstrations so as to support the CPA and the rights of the Southerners and the Marginalized of the Sudan. But let me ask simple questions: Is one week enough to table all the mentioned items for parliament discussion? How comes the demonstration is scheduled so fast before the Speaker could fail to meet the SPLM demand? I wonder whether the SPLM is sincere and realistic with its ultimatum. It might be a mechanism for chaos-making in the country?

Oh my God and my African Ancestors look at the political mess from the SPLM! What CPA implelmentation is the SPLM talking about when it it is going out as an opposition against this historical Comprehensive Peace Agreement? After all the incompetency, mediocrity and waste of time and resources of the people of Southern for almost five years now, the SPLM leaders want the poor and marginalize masses to rally behind them to justify their failures by scapegoating it on others.

But has the SPLM become a partner in the opposition parties or is it still a partner with the NCP in the Government of the Sudan with all its levels in GoNU, GoSS, and States? How can a ruling party demonstrates against itself and boycott its own duties in the government? This is a very dangerous and troublesome contradiction from the SPLM. I wonder what is the direction the SPLM is leading the people of the Sudan to!!!

I remember how Hon. Yasser Arman abandoned the duties bestowed upon him by the SPLM in the Sudan parliament in 2006 - 2007 and went to America for tourism, recreation and rest. When he found life hard and boring there he came back shamefully but was given a hero welcome by his hypocritical cronies within the SPLM without taking disciplinary measures against his unjustifiable neglect of the CPA implementation duty. The SPLM SG demotedly went to receive him in Khartoum airport though he is most senior than this Jellaba fox and should have waited to receive him in the SPLM Hqrs in Khartoum, protocol wise.

Now after having wasted time when we needed him most in the Sudan National Parliament, Hon. Arman is shamelessly telling us to storm the streets in demonstrations to cover his loss in the last minutes towards the end of game of CPA implementation. What a joke with intelligence of the people of Southern Sudan and the marginalized masses in the periphery of the Sudan!!!

Okay, assuming that the demonstrations is granted, will the SPLM be ready to accept the NCP parliamentarians and Secretariat in Juba to organize a boycott and demonstration against the Speaker in the GoSS parliament for failing to table a number of the most needed laws in the South, e.g. anti-corruption, anti-tribalism   and security laws?

I advice all the wise people of the Sudan, especially Southerners to ignore the SPLM's offside call for support and never turn out for any mass demonstrations. Let the mediocre SPLM failed leaders suffer alone the heat of their own grave that they have been digging in the name of the poor marginalized people in the Sudan. If the SPLM really cares for the common good of the entire Sudanese how comes H.E. Salva Kiir, the Vice Presidetn of the Sudan and the SPLM Chairman and also Hon. Pagan Amum, the SPLM Secretary-General, are lobbying for more pressure and sanctions on the Sudan from USA Obama’s Administration? Is the SPLM now really a patriotic national political party or a foreign stooge?

I can only join a sincere demonstration and even a Unilateral Declaration of Independence of South Sudan by 2011 if the CPA becomes obsolete without achieving the expected end results. For now I will rather not waste my time joining the failed SPLM leadership in their contiunuous mess and contraditions. Let them kill and bury the CPA and the SPLM liberation struggle by themselves!! The genuine democratic change will hunt them and shame them soon. The history of mediocrity shall bury them in the dust and abyss of geniuses of failures.

Dr. James Okuk can be reached at [email protected]