South Sudanese rebels call on President Kiir to quit party leadership

South Sudan’s armed opposition faction of the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement (SPLM-IO) under the leadership of former vice president, Riek Machar, said it was time for president Salva Kiir to step down from the leadership of the ruling party following his admission of wrong doing in the recent Arusha agreement on reunification.
An official spokesperson for the rebel leader said the contents of the Arusha agreement had passed judgment of guilt on president Kiir.
“Salva Kiir has admitted he is the cause of the current crisis. If you carefully read the provisions of the agreement on the reunification of the SPLM, you will find that he has condemned himself for unnecessarily plunging the country into this senseless war,” Machar’s spokesperson, James Gatdet Dak, told Sudan Tribune on Friday.
The agreement, he explained, “recognised, acknowledged and accepted” majority of the core reform issues which “Kiir and his group initially resisted” and led to the internal conflict within the ruling SPLM party.
He said the agreement also acknowledged the need to review the basic documents which were undemocratically passed by president Kiir’s group amid a walkout by Machar’s led reformists on 14 December 2013, a day before “president Kiir reacted violently.”
“He violently resisted reforms which he has now acknowledged after the irreparable damage is already done. The best thing he can do is quit. He should be patriotic enough to negotiate himself out of this failed leadership,” he said.
The rebel leader’s spokesman pointed out that the South Sudanese president in the Arusha agreement had admitted under his leadership the party had lost vision and direction and consequently failed to genuinely institutionalize and democratize the exercise of power in the party and this led to the current crisis.
The new agreement provided for the SPLM to redefine and implement its vision, formulate and provide policies and programmes to be implemented by its government with the aim of “achieving a democratic developmental state.”
The agreement called for introduction and implementation of reforms in various political, security, economic and public service sectors in order to save the party and the country from further “decay.”
The document also calls on the leadership of the ruling party to apologise to the people of South Sudan for the 15 December crisis.
“The leadership of SPLM/SPLA therefore reiterates the call on Salva Kiir to step down after he has now rightly accepted his failures,” he said.
President Kiir, he added, is called upon to rise above his personal or group ambitions and save the nation by stepping aside and end the war.
Source: Sudan Tribune