CPA violation: SPLM needs more muscles to counteract the cunning nature of the NCP

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States Department

“Victory in war is not measured by casualties inflicted, battles won, or lost, or territory occupied but by whether or not political objectives were achieved” - Excerpt adopted from the War as Instrument of National Policy.

The old adage that politics stops at water’s edge may or may not have relevance in Sudan’s NCP and SPLM handling of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Since the signing, and right from the moment the government of national unity was born, the NCP has been working hard to bring nothing but total discredit to the document (the CPA) that literally means so much to both the dead and the living.

From appearing as the “con artists” during the initial distribution of key portfolios, and by gradually suffocating the breathing spaces for implementing key protocols, the gullible elements of the NCP did not know what was coming as all the chills of non-implementation were being felt across Sudan.

This past week, the SPLM reacting while urging restraint, temporarily withdrew their members who are holding ministerial portfolios in the Government of National Unity—a move that has already seen both sides rooting for remedial seminars, psychology and deterrence, plus something in between.

Although it was tough decision against a calculating enemy, the move by the SPLM is laudable and politically advantageous on two fronts. First, it got the ranks and file of NCP talking after two years of holding our hands on fire while tampering with the CPA with glaring impunity, and second, the move lends itself to more latitude and leverage in the long term.

The question now is how long will the SPLM see that leverage last? Well, the move has a greater chance of allowing the SPLM to reassert its political clout that was nearly lost in the fog of NCP aggression and indifference—the same move by the SPLM will be sustained by forestalling all hues of exquisite leadership’s will.

In fact, Basher’s right hand men, Nafie and Mustafa, were quick to launch a barrage of political diatribe against that SPLM’s position. The two men are on a collision course, determined to pour out scathing attacks of threats, contradictions and the SPLM must have by now seen how revisionist the NCP is becoming. It does not require a wordsmith to call them revisionists.

Matter of fact for the next few weeks, a lot great interplay of action and reaction will be seen. President Bashir has already refused to take the SPLM’s position paper—a list of demands that he feared to even catch let alone reading its content. We hope the SPLM Interim Political Bureau‘s crisis team is looking into his response.

It is in the very best interest of the SPLM that the north and the south do not go to war and that stabilizing CPA is the single most prime, optimal and political objective there is. Conversely, taking the assumption that the NCP shares the same peaceful goals as we do would be a grave miscalculation.

The SPLM must also continue to busy itself with creating advantages against this calculating enemy (the NCP) because the next thing that will follow their refusal to heeding our demands will be the freezing of oil revenues—the share of the oil wealth that comes to south as per the stipulations enshrined in the CPA

And no matter how hard they (NCP) try to bleed their lips about implementing the peace, their past actions exist to speak volumes and the SPLM should be reading those very cues.

The SPLA must also let it known to the southern pockets of SSDF that this is an hour of crisis and that “partisan” politics—if it indeed the SSDF is a party-- must stop at the water’s edge; that pandering to the external agenda of proxies will not square well with southerners this time no matter how enticing the politics of acronyms has become.

Crisis ebbs and flows but at the end of day, it is south Sudan and other marginalized regions that will have to shoulder the immense logistical nightmare of reconstructing while keeping an eye on the CPA, and there is no doubt the SPLM needs more muscles to realize that uphill task.

Let’s rally around in this time of need by giving the People’s Party the support it deserves in order to achieve our political objective.