A South Sudanese civil society body has welcomed the recent meeting between a faction of the armed opposition movement (SPLM/A-IO) and a government delegation, describing it as a pathway for resolving political grievances within the party.
This week, a South Sudanese government delegation headed an advisor to President Salva Kiir met the Kit-Gwang group of the SPLM-IO at a meeting held in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.
In a statement issued on Sunday, the Executive Director of Community Empowerment for Progress Organisation (CEPO), Edmund Yakani said the meeting in Khartoum is a “positive” development towards implementation of the peace agreement.
“Compromise is required from every faction of the SPLM/A-IO in the conflict. This recent attitudes of waging violence for the gain of power and wealth are becoming clear. The SPLM/A-IO leadership in conflict should understand that there is an end for everything,” he explained.
The activist urged political elites across South Sudan with their different political motives to understand that the only political framework that can help with regional and international acceptance for transitioning from violence to peace is the genuine implementation of the R-ARCSS.
“Any attempt to fail the R-ARCSS [Agreement on Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan] implementation is not healthy for the national stabilization in all aspects of governance. The stability and peace of country should be top priority of all priorities of any entity with motivation of sitting in the government,” he stressed.
Meanwhile, Yakani urged parties to the peace agreement to renew their pledge for genuine implementation of the accord that ended the five-year civil war.
The Kitgwang Declaration was a coup by South Sudanese rebel commander Simon Gatwech Dual on August 4, 2021, in which he replaced First Vice President Riek Machar as leader of the SPLM/A-IO leading to a deadly rebel infighting. Gatwech issued a communiqué following a meeting of opposition commanders at Kitgwang in Magenis, a northern-most town bordering Sudan, declaring that Machar had been removed as the leader of the SPLM-IO and that he has assumed power as the new opposition leader.
Machar, however, responded with another communiqué following a meeting of the SPLM-IO Political Bureau in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, and then accused unnamed “peace spoilers” of engineering the opposition split
