It is a surprise! before people were criticizing Dr/Lam Akol's performances as a minister of foreign affairs. As I was reading the comments via Sudan tribune website, I found that most of the commenters criticized the Sudanese president, when he has appointed Dr/Lam as a minister of cabinet of ministers to the extent that one of them said that " Dr/Lam Akol should have been entirely fired ..."
Why don't they say openly and boldly that they don't want the man to hold any position either in the Government of National Unity or in the Government of South Sudan, rather than criticizing the president who only has implemented one of the SPLM demands by appointing another person to replace Dr/Lam as the minister of foreign affairs. are all our southerner leaders doing well while Dr/ Lam is not doing well? are we really after reshuffle and fully implementation of the remain protocols or after something else? if something else what can we say about the militias(SSDF), who had been fighting with the Sudanese government side by side against the SPLM/A and now sharing the power with SPLM? we have to think twice, because we do not know what the future will hold if we continue in this way.

Pagan Amum; A Contribution Factor To Salva Kiir’s Demise and SPLM’s Pullout From GoNU

By Eng. Charles B. Kisanga*

More details are emerging of the issues which led to announcement of SPLM withdrawal from the GoNU.

Some of the episodes are now being attributed to Pagan Amum from some quarters of Southern Sudan. Pagan also seemed to have designed it intentionally to make Lt. General Salva Kiir as the one shouldering the whole responsibility for failing to deliver on the CPA and many failures so that he, untimely as leader, will be much discredited with failures to deliver. It is said that even Lt. General Salva Kiir was mostly absent during the debate in Juba from October 4th to 11th and had little or no contribution to the decision to pull out even if temporarily, as they claim. Hence it was a decision by an interim Politburo which has high number of Pagan Amum hand-picked friends from the old SPLM kitchen cabinet ( Salva Kiir was never part of the old SPLM kitchen cabinet) and hence Lt. General Salva Kiir is getting the culpability for something he has little power over.

One of the reasons mentioned for the withdrawal was that the SPLM submitted a list for reshuffle of the cabinet several month ago but the President of the republic sat on it without wanting to act and the SPLM had a right to reshuffle its members in GoNU. However the problem is not as simple as that. The SPLM group led by the SPLM Secretary General Pagan Amum wants the man he considers his arch-enemy and fellow tribesman Dr. Lam Akol out of the cabinet and as such on top of the list was Dr. Lam Akol, the Foreign minister. Of course Dr. Lam Akol is a big political figure with his own following and he is not a man you can just throw away because you want more tribal appointmenst which will result in a Shilluk being replaced by still a majority tribe man. Sudan President Omer El Beshir has been under fire from SPLM factions each demanding that President Beshir should not give in to more tribal appointments from the SPLM. The move to dismiss all SPLM members from GoNU who do not agree with tribal and corrupt policies and to replace them with members from particular tribesmen could easily result in tribal war in Southern Sudan. Hence, it not that easy just to dismiss more of our people as SPLM becomes more factionalised and each camp wants to take over the reigns of power.

This seems to be some of the sinister polices behind Pagan Amum's decision to compel the so-called SPLM Interim Politburo with his faction of former SPLM kitchen cabinet to announce the suspension of participation in GoNU as a way to compel the NCP to act on difficult polices while they, SPLM faction had no ability to handle it due to their infighting. You do not expect anybody to work when they are factionalised in a way that you live today only as best as your faction can fight to keep you there.

Also seeing that Pagan Amum SPLM faction is dominating the Interim Politburo, even Lt. General Salva Kiir was scared and tried to appoint his royal elements into the SPLM Politburo in order to boost his own ranking in the so-called Interim SPM Politburo. Hence, it is no surprise to see some changes recently like three new positions for deputy chairman and new members to the Interim Politburo. Why have such appointments when we could easily do Conventions for a good party.

So the failures of CPA implementation still are due to more infighting among SPLM members than attributed to Khartoum. Then all comes back again to tribalism and corruption as something making life more difficult for SPLM.

Realising that SPLM has no way out among themselves Pagan has tried to internationalise a small problem by pulling out of GoNU and claiming it is the Arabs or Northerners as usual as way of playing to the South Sudanese people’s emotions of Arabs as the number enemy.

My motto is really to bring truth about the issues so the masses of Southern Sudan because many in SPLM are trying to hide the truth so that the masses should just play to the tunes of Arab enemy without seeing the underlying SPLM incompetence and weakness brought about by divisions. If the SPLM is too big and too troublesome to survive then we need to break it up into organised factions like the split in 1991 before it is too late, and the sooner the better.

* Eng. Kisanga is a former SPLM NLC member who currently lives and works in exile in UK as Consultant Communication Systems/Software Engineer. He is also chairman of Western Equatoria Azande Community world wide Organisation. He can be reached on cbkisanga@yahoo.co.uk