Leaked Memo: Backstabbings and Political Intrigues within the SPLM

Dear Cde Pagan Amoum Okiech by Aleu Ayieny Aleu

Khartoum, Jan. 26. 2008

Dear Cde Pagan Amoum Okiech, SPLM Secretary General      

SUBJECT: YOU REMINDED ME COMRADE PAGAN.

      In 1986, I and you Comrade Pagan Amum and few other comrades that I will not mention here were sent to one of the most prestigious school for revolutionary studies in Latin America and the Caribbean . We studied Marxism-Leninism and several other isms that would make us political commissars that will go back and turn a simple SPLA soldier to a tenacious revolutionary of Viet Cong fervidity. To be able to do this, we were told that the spirit of Marxism-Leninism requires us to elevate one person who is either a Comrade Chairman or Comrade Secretary General and transform him into a superman possessing supernatural characteristics akin to those of a god. Such a person supposedly knows everything, sees everything, thinks for everyone, can do anything including firing you out of the party if you are lucky or fire squad you to death and you should not complain at all if you are a patriot!

      Such a belief was cultivated in to us for one year and then we were allowed to go back to the battle fields to spread the gospel except you Comrade Pagan who remained behind for three more years to enable you qualify for a Bishop in dialectical materialism. Few days after our arrival to the SPLA GHQ, Deputy Chairman and Chief of Staff by then Cde William Nyuon in connivance with Cde Arok Thon Arok taking advantage of the absence of the Chairman Dr John Garang ordered the arrest of    known progressive officers (communists) including new communists who have just arrived from the school of revolutionary studies. Only those believed to be relatives or very close to Dr John and Cde Salva Kiir were spared. I was not arrested because both William and Arok thought I come from Gogrial and a relative to Cde Salva Kiir. This is the origin of what is now known as: (Garang Boys or Awalad John.)

     The cult of the person of a chairman and all the members of the High Command became at a certain specific stage a source of personal security and the only way to survive. You must be noticed singing louder the revolutionary songs praising a member of the High Command you have chosen to be your patron and a protector. This created a whole series of exceedingly serious and grave perversions of SPLM/A principles and the revolutionary legality. All members of High Command competed to be praised more in revolutionary songs composed by soldiers. We never realized fully the practical consequences resulting from the cult of these individuals and the accumulation of immense and limitless power in their hands until we witnessed several High Command internal intrigues. Great harm was caused by the violation of the principle of collective direction of the movement which resulted into several attempts to depose the Chairman by his fellow members of the High Command and culminated into murder or lengthy imprisonment of several of our colleagues.

      Comrade Pagan, when I read your interview with the New Sudan Vision dated Dec.22.2007. I could not belief how power can change the yesterday’s haunted lamb into a vicious wolf directing salvo of his vengeance guns against wrong comrades who have never done any harm to him.

     Comrade Pagan, you know who forced you to participate in the execution of your best friend and co-terrorist late Lakurnyang, you know who wanted to killed you when you were deployed to Jamus Battalion and how Dr John rescued you and exiled you to Bahr el Ghazal away from your enemies, you know very well who waylaid you between Gambella and Itang and shot your vital parts into smithereens inflicting in to you a body damage belief to be responsible for your traumatic behaviors. Dr John had to send you back to Cuba for several years and you only had to come back after you were assured that all your enemies are either dead or have deserted the movement. How come you forgot all the injustice you suffered simply because you became the SPLM Secretary General?   You should be the last person on earth to conspire against others if you really have memories of what is human and what is inhuman.

       You reminded me about the early cultish days of the SPLM/A and when I revised my notes on the course we took together about the history of the communist party of the Soviet Union, I was amazed to discover that you have re-introduced the personality cult to your person especially among the new arrivals in the SPLM. You have also revived the communist culture of disinformation and fabrication. Who told you that I was charged of the violation of the party laws and attempting to divide the party? If you do not know the charges against me then better shut up and keep your habitual lies among the new arrivals into SPLM who actually do not know what kind of a person you are. The general SPLM public concern is the way you are treating our unsuspecting SPLM Chairman. You are treating him the same way Secretary General, Comrade Stalin treated Comrade Chairman Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. When Comrade Lenin discovered too late the kind of monster he created, he wrote the following letter to the party congress: “After taking over the position of the Secretary General, Comrade Stalin accumulated in his hands immeasurable power and I am not certain whether he will be always able to use this power with the required care.”

   This letter, a political document of tremendous importance became known in the party history as Lenin’s “testament,” and a warning to all non suspecting chairmen that Secretary Generals could be very dangerous rivals in the party. Chairman Lenin immediately died of heart attack triggered by his disappointment to Cde Stalin the Secretary General. Cde Stalin was a former Banks robber like you Cde Pagan who is a former Buma Mountains terrorist (You took foreign tourists hostages in 1983 and demanded huge ransom and in the same year together with your friend late Lakurnyang you abducted the wife of Major Kerubino Kuanyin Bol by then the Government Forces commander in Pibor.) Stalin immediately started mass repression first against comrades falsely branded enemies of Leninism— the Trotskyites, Zinovievites, and the Bukharinites. He also turned against honest Communists and those party cadres who had born the heavy load of the civil war.

     Stalin originated the concept “enemy of the people” reminiscent to your branding of your adversaries as (Jalaba baaw or NCP sell out.) This branding automatically make it unnecessary for comrades accused to be proven guilty; this branding made possible the use of most cruel repression, violating all norms of party legality, against any one who in any way disagreed with Stalin, against those who were only suspected of hostile intent, against those thought to have bad reputation and indiscipline. In 1937-38, 70 per cent of the Central Committee were arrested and shot. The same fate also met the majority of the delegates to the seventeenth party congress. Of 1,966 delegates, 1,108 persons were arrested on charges of counter-revolutionary crimes.

      Stalin ordered the murder of Sergei M. Kirov and apportioned the blame to innocent comrades he wanted to liquidate. Several comrades were murdered and the rest were expelled from the party illegally through the brutal abuse of the party statute, because the questions of executions and expulsions were never reviewed at the Central Committee Plenum

      After the death of Stalin, the cases of the so called enemies of the people were examined and it was found that all their cases were fabricated.

      Comrade, there is no bitter misery than to be prosecuted by the Party or the Movement for which you have fought, sacrificed over half of your life, and shed your own blood for its principles.

       I do not want to bore you with the history of the rein of Stalin but to clarify to you the origin of the SPLM Chairman and you Secretary General’s justice in expelling me out of the Movement simply because I suspected foul play in the fateful death of our   founding leader of the SPLM/A. That is not the reason Cde Pagan. You know very well that there is no any other SPLM cadre, highly trained in Marxism- Leninism and not a communist who is capable to see through you transparently and your Stalinist machinations other than myself. Cde Pagan, you would wish me dead as I am the only person who could expose you as a former terrorist (Hostage taker for ransom) and a communist who is hypocritically in bed with USA establishment. Cde Pagan, you also know that I am aware that Sudan Communist Party had recalled back all their card holding members including you. Of course no body knows other than me that you have been both running SPLM and Sudan Communist Party offices in Havanna – Cuba all the years you have been there. Beside the above, the most serious fundamental difference between me and you is that you believe in New Sudan and I am a simple Southern Sudanese Nationalist who fought hard and sacrificed my life for people of Southern Sudan to exercise the Right of Self Determination.

        In the last INC meeting, I proposed frankly to the INC in your presence the need to abolish the position of a Secretary General in the SPLM because I clearly detected Stalinism rapidly sprouting in you and must be nipped in the bud before it is too late. Cde Pagan, you positively identified the leadership inheritance syndrome in the Chairman and took advantage of it. My alleged permanent suspension together with Cde Talar Ring Deng is the beginning of your Stalinism and the rein of terror in the SPLM. Few days ago you again manipulated the Chairman to dismiss Cde Monoah Aligo the elected chairman of the SPLM Caucus in the National Assembly for no apparent reason. These illegal dismissals of very senior members of the SPLM by the SPLM Chairman prompted Governor Samuel Abu John of Western Equatoria State to also summarily dismiss five legislators from the State Assembly! (God save SPLM.)

      Comrade, I have always known as a liberator that war of liberation is usually everything to a true revolutionary but the end is nothing. The fruits of the tree of freedom are usually eaten by cowards and opportunists. It is unfortunate that I am being detracted for in-house battles as if the war I have sacrificed so much in it is definitely over. I warn all of you the communists behind my unwarranted humiliation that I will not take this insult lying down nor do I have the intention to be exonerated, absolved and rehabilitated posthumously. Who ever is pushing people to the corner or to wrong camp which is not of their own choice is doing it at his own peril and the peril of the SPLM.

          My dear Bolsheviks, you have won your first battle with the assistance of the unsuspecting Chairman of the SPLM whom I belief is not immune to your conspiracies. You may not be lucky in your plan “B” other wise I have a strong premonition that your days are numbered thanks to Cde Malik Agar. His confederation scum is the tip of your communist grand conspiracy against the wishes of the people of Southern Sudan . I AM ALREADY CALLING TO ARMS ALL NATIONALIST AGAINST THE BOLSHEVIK THUGS.

Signed.

Aleu Ayieny Aleu

February 24, 2008 (KHARTOUM) — Telar Deng, former state minister at the presidency and minister of state at the Ministry of Justice launched a fierce attack against Sudan People Liberation Movement (SPLM) leadership and accused its chairman Salva Kiir of being a dictator.

“There is no democracy in the SPLM and they were never democratic to start with. If they were why are their members prohibited from criticizing or blaming the chairman or the Secretary General” Deng said in an interview with the pro-government Akhir-Lahza.

“The chairman is now the center of everything in the SPLM since he is the one who expels people from the movement and the army without consulting with anyone in the political bureau he added.

Telar Deng along with Aleu Ayieny, the former state minister of interior, were expelled from SPLM’s political bureau and the national assembly as well as the SPLM’s membership in general as of December in a decree issued by Kiir.

The chairman’s decision was taken on the grounds of the report by the investigation committee that was formed to investigate Telar Deng’s statements in which he accused some SPLM members of plotting to topple Salva Kiir and Aleu Ayieny’s repeated statements in which he accused the Ugandan government of being complicit in the death of the SPLM’s former leader, John Garang.

But Deng said in the interview that he did not meet with the investigation committee though he said he appealed the decision.

The former SPLM official said that the two main reasons for his expulsion because he said that the Secretary General Pagan Amum “does not respect Salva Kiir and gives him no consideration”.

Deng said the second reason is that some people around Kiir told him that the chairman and the nominee for the secretariat “cannot be from the same region [Bahr El-Gazal] because other SPLM members won’t like it so you have to expel him so as not to jeopardize his chairmanship”.

“The SPLM chairman has no right to expel or suspend any member; this power is vested in the political bureau” he said.

Deng said that his expulsion is in line with other non-democratic practices inside the SPLM.

“There are things happening inside the SPLM that cannot be imagined. There is a General in the SPLA named Berto Mamul who has been imprisoned for over a year and a half with no charges being brought against him. There is also Queen, John Macor and Martin Macway as well who have been detained without investigation or charges or prosecution” he said.

“The purpose of these bogus accusations and non-genuine trials is to reshuffle the cabinet and bring in new people which is what happened” he added.

Deng also noted that there is a power struggle within the SPLM between different factions.

“There is an ideological struggle between those who believe in new Sudan as a strategic direction for the SPLM in the context of getting rid of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP)” Deng said.

“Nowhere in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) does it mention anything about the new Sudan. The CPA is an agreement to end the war andachieve peace and democratic transition” he added.

He further accused some SPLM figures of seeking an alliance with Northern opposition parties to weaken the NCP.

“Why should we go to the Northern opposition parties to discuss the CPA? If we wanted to change the agreement why did we sign it in the first place? Why don’t we just sit down with the party who we signed the agreement with?” he said.

The former SPLM official (said) that this is direction taken by the “northerners” within the SPLM who are “unhappy about the CPA because it grants the south the right of self-determination”.

“Where would Yasir Arman, Malik Agar, Mansour Khalid and Luka Biong go if the South decides to secede? They are all communists and all of the people in the SPLM Northern sector are communists with only one southerner present” he added.

Deng said that the SPLA units are hungry and “they are tying to provide food for themselves through their rifles. When they are hungry they create this anarchy we are witnessing”.

On the economic front Deng said that “there is no development in the true sense of the word”.

“There are roads and hotels inside Juba and nothing else. This is contrary to the vision of Late Dr. John Garang who said that he will move the city to the countryside. Currently it is the other way around” Deng said.

“There are no roads in the countryside or services or goods or water or health or schools. The legitimate question is that where did the oil money that add up to $3.5 billion go? Why wasn’t the government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) able to get assistance from other countries?” he asked.

“There are phony jobs that exist in the south that are in excess of what is needed and their salaries are higher than anywhere in the world. The junior officer in the south is paid $4,000 monthly and there are commissions with managers who do nothing with an army of employees such as commission for combating corruption and human rights” Deng added.

Deng also accused the SPLM leadership of having multi faces on the issue of unity or secession from the north.

“The SPLM in Egypt say that they are in favor of unity, in Nairobi they are for secession and in Khartoum for the new Sudan. There is no clear direction for the people to vote for. In addition to that they ignored the Nuba Mountains and Darfur. No SPLM official has bothered to visit the region since the CPA’ he said.

“They have not appointed any leaders from Nuba Mountains since Youssef Kuwa passed away because Abdel-Aziz Al-Hilu does not represent the Nuba people and he is from Darfur Masalit. We in the SPLM have no plan for developing the region who stood by us during the civil war years” he added.