Senior SPLM colleagues give Kiir ultimatum over party crisis

Senior leaders of the South Sudan’s ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) have given the country’s president and party chairman, Salva Kiir Mayardit, an ultimatum to put things right or else they will resort to the party constitution and act accordingly. The former vice-president and current first deputy chairman of the SPLM Riek Machar, backed by several senior party leaders, called on Kiir to convene a meeting of the party’s highest executive organ, the Political Bureau (PB) that will set an agenda for the planned convening of the National Liberation Council (NLC). NLC meeting was scheduled for 9 December bypassing the PB meeting, but the leaders said the former should take place before the latter. In a press conference organised on Friday in Juba in the compound of the new SPLM leadership house recently inaugurated by Kiir, the leaders accused Kiir of misguided leadership style which they said has paralyzed both the party and government. The leaders accused their chairman’s leadership style saying it was characterised by corruption and deviation from the party’s vision as well as encouraging regionalism and ethnicity. They further accused Kiir of forming his own army in the name of presidential guards and intending to form a separate political party that would be linked to the National Congress Party (NCP) in Khartoum. Machar said the party found itself in the war of vision and personality. A number of the leaders spoke during the press conference which was packed with representatives of local and international media houses and hundreds from the public who witnessed the event despite earlier announcement that the public was not invited. Machar read the press statement to the media, articulating the charges labelled against Kiir’s leadership, calling for PB meeting to address the internal crisis in the party. Madam Robecca Nyandeng, the widow of the late founder of the SPLM, John Garang de Mabior, said the country was going in the wrong direction and needed the leaders to speak out and correct the situation. Meanwhile the suspended secretary general Pagan Amum revealed that the Friday press conference was the beginning of a series of party activities, announcing that a public rally would be held on Saturday, 14 December. The former minister of Cabinet Affairs, Deng Alor Kuol, decried the current leadership of president Salva Kiir, saying he is surrounded by people who are disconnected even from the outside world and prone to manipulation by Khartoum. Also the former gubernatorial candidate in Central Equatoria state’s 2010 elections, Alfred Lado Gore, pointed out that SPLM had no ideology to follow and that resulted to some of the confusions currently witnessed. Machar before reading the press statement also called on the government to declare three-day mourning for the death of the former South African president, Nelson Mandela, and to lower the national flag at half mask. Source: Sudan Tribune