South Sudan leaders challenge dictatorial president

Key leaders of South Sudan's ruling party charged President Salva Kiir with "dictatorial" behavior Friday, warning of instability threatening the young nation in a deeply controversial challenge to his rule. The group were led by powerful politician Riek Machar, a charismatic but controversial leader who fought on both sides of Sudan's brutal 1983-2005 civil war, and who was sacked as vice-president in July. It also included Rebecca Garang, the widow of South Sudan's founding father John Garang. The statement makes public the bitter divisions within the former rebel movement turned political party, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM). "The deep-seated divisions within the SPLM leadership, exacerbated by dictatorial tendencies of the SPLM chairman (Kiir)... are likely to create instability in the party and in the country," Machar warned, reading a joint statement. Machar was joined at a news conference at party headquarters in the capital Juba by suspended SPLM secretary-general Pagan Amum, former justice minister John Luk Jok, and former security minister Oyai Deng. South Sudan won its independence in 2011 after its people voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to split from the north and form a new nation. Since independence, Kiir has struggled to stem rampant corruption and quell rebellion and conflict in the grossly impoverished but oil-rich nation, left devastated by decades of war. "The SPLM is not a ruling party," Machar added, calling for a meeting of its top leadership. "In practice, decisions are essentially made by one person." Machar fought on both sides of the civil war, leading a splinter SPLM faction that sided with the Sudanese government in Khartoum, battling troops commanded by Kiir, who comes from the Dinka people. Machar's troops were accused of a brutal massacre in the ethnic Dinka town of Bor in 1991.