Press Statement

Date: 2 October 2019

There is a growing orchestrated clamour from some quarters these days that the Revitalized Government of National Unity (R-GoNU) must be formed on 12 November without delay, even if that meant excluding other Parties to the Agreement signed on 12 September 2018.

These quarters are led to believe that such a government will move things in South Sudan to the better. Some flippant excuses are given to justify such a step which do not stand against close scrutiny. Such a position misses the point absolutely. Formation of the R-TGoNU is not the magic wand that will resolve all outstanding issues in the peace process.

We are afraid that we are repeating the same things we did in 2015/ 6 under the same conditions and expecting different results. It will be recalled that in the 2015 Agreement the issue of creating 28 States threw a banner in the works and the formation of the TGoNU that was supposed to take place in November 2015 was delayed owing to the objection of some Parties to the Agreement to this unilateral decision of the President which contravened both the Constitution 2011 and the Agreement itself.

To resolve this matter, IGAD Council of Ministers took a decision on 31 J anuary 2016 that the order was indeed a violation of the peace agreement, that its implementation be frozen and that a National Boundary Commission be formed to consider the issue. Then followed wide scale calls from the region and internationally that the TGoNU must be formed without delay and Parties were pushed to doing so even at the expense of meeting the security ar angements agreed in J uba and beyond countrywide.

The Parties placed their faith in the region and the international community and a TGoNU was formed at the end of April 2016. Do we need to remind ourselves what happened next? The fighting that started at J1 is the reason for the cur ent devastation in South Sudan, the worst in its recent history. Sadly, those quarters never took time to condemn the culprits. That at least would have mitigated the pain felt by the victims.

Without the political will from the government, forming a government in November or thereafter will not bring about peace in South Sudan.

It does not need rocket science to conclude that the failure of the 2015 Agreement was due to the government’s lack of will to implement it (it actually said so) and, perhaps, the gullibility of the Parties in the ability of the so-called Guarantors of the Agreement to guide its implementation. Today, one may ask: is there anything different from that nar ative of three or four years ago? The situation looks so familiar, deja vu. It is the same problems of the number of states and security ar angements that now stand against the formation of R-TGoNU as they did in 2015.

Do we repeat the failed prescription? Or some people don’t really care as some South Sudanese cynics put it? The government’s lack of will is manifest in denying financial resources to the implementation of the security ar angements, especially the formation of the Necessary Unified Forces (NUF). It is the government that boycotted and scuttled the last IGAD meeting scheduled for 18-19 September to discuss and resolve the issue of the number and boundaries of the States. It is the government troops that are still occupying civilian buildings, thus denying the return of displaced persons to their homes. As one citizen quipped: does it require money to evacuate somebody’s home, school or hospital? We should put our finger on where the problem is.

The government’s lack of will is manifest in denying financial resources to the implementation of the security arrangements, especially the formation of the necessary unified forces (NUF).

Do we repeat the failed prescription? Or some people don’t really care as some South Sudanese cynics put it? The government’s lack of will is manifest in denying financial resources to the implementation of the security ar angements, especially the formation of the Necessary Unified Forces (NUF). It is the government that boycotted and scuttled the last IGAD meeting scheduled for 18-19 September to discuss and resolve the issue of the number and boundaries of the States. It is the government troops that are still occupying civilian buildings, thus denying the return of displaced persons to their homes. As one citizen quipped: does it require money to evacuate somebody’s home, school or hospital? We should put our finger on where the problem is.

Without the political will from the government, forming a government in November or thereafter will not bring about peace in South Sudan. It is just the perpetuation of the status quo under a different garb. We hope that the United Nations Security Council in its expected visit to the region will be able to remind the government of its commitment to the implementation of the Pre-Transition tasks. These are the necessary pre-requisites for forming R- TGoNU. The government must do the following:

1- Provide the funds required to implement the security ar angements, especially at cantonment sites;

2- Stop scuttling steps towards the resolution of the issue of the number and boundaries of States;

3- Withdraw its troops from civilian centres as the SPLM/ A-IO has already done.

4- Respect and implement the resolutions of the IGAD Council of Ministers held on 21 August 2019 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia;

5- Take the Constitutional Amendment Bill to Parliament for ratification. A Constitution and a law may provide for a date upon which it comes into force.

The same government that insisted during the peace talks that one country cannot have more than one army during the Transitional Period is the same one now ready by forming RTGoNU before the NUF to have multiple armies. What has changed? Also, the talk about the VIP protection force misses the point on at least two counts: first, the purpose of the NUF is to protect the civil population not the VIPs who have been dining and wining in J uba for almost ten months now. After all, those targeted in the 2013 massacres were civilians. Second, even if the idea of VIP protection were to be accepted (it is nowhere in the agreement) it is much less in size than the force that was driven out of Juba in July 2016. So, which VIP are they going to protect? The correct understanding of VIP protection is that it must be within the deployment of NUF.

True, the extension in May of the Pre-Transitional Period did provide that it was non-extendable. That decision was made on a number of assumptions that did not come to pass. We cannot be prisoners of our own decisions when the higher interest of our people dictates otherwise. Hence, it is our considered opinion that with the forces now moving to cantonment what remained really is mostly the training and deployment of NUF. This can be achieved in another three (3) months or so.

We cannot be prisoners of our own decisions when the higher interest of our people dictates otherwise.

If we want to get things right we should be thinking on these lines. Provided, of course, that this time around J uba is made to pay the money required. Our top priority is the faithful implementation of the Peace Agreement, not seeking disastrous quick fixes, such as forming the R-TGoNU come 12 November.

Mahjoub Biel Turuk,
Acting Secretary General,
National Democratic Movement (NDM).