SPLM-DC’s Secretariat Rocks by Resignations and Defections
11 min readYien Thiang Luony’s Resignation from SPLM-DC
Dear colleagues,
Its important to inform all of you about my decision to leave the SPLM-DC, the party which united me with some of you. Over the years we have formed enough bonds that shall stay between us forever. As friends and colleagues, I felt obliged to inform you that I have disagree with the way the Chairman is managing the party, especially in matters pertaining to the security issues. As leaders in the party, our chairman should answer us responsibly when one raises a point of concern, but not to brush one off like a child. Some of such queries are live threatening and should be taken as such. While my bus stopped here, I wish you well in your adventure.
Second, allow me to highlight the fact that as I see defections from our party here and there, they were never analyses to see our own weakness as to why people resigned or defect. Instead, the deserters are disparages and accused of embezzling money, running to seeks positions in the government or fearing for the threat for their lives. in any case live is good, which is why some of us cannot come to juba for the fear for their lives. As a peace of advice to you, if you have to advance the cause of the SPLM-DC, I advice you to look inwards first and foremost. There you would be able to find the best way to succeed. Its an honest advice but you have every right to leave or take.
Finally, People who know themselves always meet here and there, its important we maintain respect to one another.
Thanks
Yien Thiang Luony.
Sandra Bona Malwal’s Resignation from SPLM-Dc
13th September 2011
To:
H.E. Dr. Lam Akol
Chairman,
Sudanese Peoples’ Liberation Movement for Democratic Change
Subject: Resignation from the Post of Secretary General of SPLM/DC and withdrawal of Membership from the party
Dear Dr. Lam Akol,
With great honor and respect I would like to convey my regards to you after this long period. I would also want to make sure that you are not surprised of why I am writing you this letter. I have worked hard through your support and have learned a lot from you. I felt empowered politically, economically, socially and administratively by your leadership.
As per the subject of this letter sincerely speaking I feel that I would like to step aside from politics until further notice and I am hereby resigning from the post of the Secretary General and membership of the party. My main reason being I am a single parent and need to be close to my children all the time, I need to be picking them for holidays and returning them to Nairobi after each school term, here I feel that I will not be able to handle both jobs simultaneously. Therefore, allow me to thank you personally and all the members in SPLM-DC, all the members of the national council, and the national executive committee members. I would also like to tell them all that I enjoyed working with them, I would like to ask for forgiveness if I happen to offend or inconvenience anybody in one way or another during the period I was in the office.
For the time being I would like to concentrate on my civil society organization of empowering women which allows me free movement when I need to, I wish SPLM-DC all the best in the struggle for democracy and change. Thank you.
Yours faithfully,
Sandra Bona Malwal
Coordinator,
Sudanese Women Empowerment for Peace
Juba-South Sudan
Dr. Lam Akol’s Response
Dear members of SPLM-DC,
You have read the resignation of Yien on this forum. I am also getting it at the same time as you did. I will not for now dwell much on the content of the resignation but I want to say something about its circumstances. Yien, Deng and Sandra were to resign last month on "fears on security". I wrote them a letter on the 23rd of August on the issues they were raising [This answers his baseless claim that I brushed him aside like a child and that the security issues were not being addressed] . If Yien wants us to accept the propaganda of our enemies and detractors on security allegations, then he should come out clearly and tell us what we do not know. I am pasting the letter here for everybody to read so that we are not taken in by sugar-coated misrepresentation. Now, if the resignation of Yien, Sandra, Deng, etc, was well-intentioned why did they have to hold a press conference to do so? If they were leaving the party in peace, why did they this morning draw 13.8 thousand SSP out of the party account in the bank, which we discovered was in the name of Sandra and Deng?
We will respond when we read the statement they have put out and what they said at the press conference. In the meantime I would like you to read carefully the letter I wrote to the SG with copies to Yien, Deng and all members of the Secretariat. I was not being prophetic but the writing was clear on the wall. BEGIN:
23/8/2011
The Secretary General,
SPLM-DC.
I hear there are grumblings and finger-pointing in Juba as to what the party should or should not have done and why the Chairman is not in Juba. All these are signs of a sagging morale; and no battle, in this case political, can be fought when the morale is low! None of these issues being talked about is new or has taken us by surprise. Therefore, this is a restatement of those positions so that we are on the same wavelength and do not rehash matters for whatever motives.
Position of the SPLM towards the party:
Right from the word go, the SPLM has appraised that the SPLM-DC was the only party that could pose a threat to its dominance and pull the carpet from underneath its feet, especially, that it was born at a time when the general elections were just a few months away. It resorted to smearing the good name of the party that it had militias and indeed outlawed it. The SPLM could not prove this allegation in the Constitutional Court and that was why we won the case and were allowed to contest the elections. However, they never stopped making such allegations. The most serious aspect of it is that of late the President has been saying the same in public and when addressing the SPLA at its HQ in Juba. Now, with an independent South Sudan under the SPLM there is no Constitutional Court to resort to and anything can happen.
The Move of the Secretariat to Juba:
Some of you in the Secretariat have been agitating for the Secretariat to move to Juba even before the referendum. I was even accused of being obstructive to such a move. In any case, it was eventually decided to move to Juba but we all knew the risk involved. You remember that the Southern members in the leadership of the party held at least two meetings in your house to discuss the matter. Some of the points agreed were:
1. There was a great risk involved in moving to juba but we had to do it come what may.
2. Members who felt that their physical security was at risk are free not to go. I and a few others were identified as such persons.
3. The SPLM was bent on banning the political parties it did not agree with, and that SPLM-DC was in the top of the list.
4. Our presence in Juba will make the job of curtailing our activities much easier.
Therefore, we were prepared for the worst scenario that of proscribing our party. This renders the current rumblings the more astonishing.
Resources of the party:
The party needs resources to run its activities, but it does not follow that if the party has no resources it will die. There are many parties in both North and South Sudan today without resources and are active and running. We need to be aware of this fact in order to erase the current erroneous assumption in the minds of many in our party that it must pay its leaders. Some days back I was informed that one or two individuals threatened to resign from the party because their names did not appear in the new Secretariat, meaning not getting paid! We have been paying in the past because we had some resources, very soon this will stop altogether when these resources run out mainly as a consequence of the Spring Revolutions. We must be prepared for very hard times ahead. “Those who cannot stand the heat will leave the kitchen”. A party is not a payment agency or a milking cow, even the milking cow has to be fed to give milk. A party is for real sacrifice, more so when it has espoused change; one must give it more than he/she takes from it. This is the bottom line. Before the party was formed none of us was starving from hunger, and so none will if the party has no money. Those who cannot proceed without money will give way to those who can.
Labouring under the propaganda of the Opponent:
Labouring under the propaganda of the opponent is the surest way to ruin. The adversary does not wish us well and will therefore strive hard to drive a wedge within our ranks by using all kinds of disinformation.
First, I am told our people are worried because the other side always wonders why the Chairman is not in Juba. But is this new? Did we not discuss it?
I have said it time and again that nothing short of Salva Kiir agreeing publicly to meet me will I ever set foot in Juba. It is a matter of personal security. Period. The same people these members are listening to, were first talking about why the party HQ was not in Juba. Now that it is in Juba, they have shifted gear to as to why the Chairman was not there, and if he is there tomorrow they will shift to something else. It will never end until they see us out of the way. Mohammed Osman El-Mirghani, the leader of the DUP, has been outside Sudan for more than a year and the DUP is running. None of its members is questioning his absence. Sometimes by our very actions we tend to consolidate what is in the minds of the SPLM people that SPLM-DC is Lam Akol and he alone!
Second, I also hear that the SPLM people are telling some of our members that the SPLM-DC ‘s sponsoring of militias is now proved because Peter Gadet brought more evidence! And this became a matter of concern, if not fear. In the first place, who among you dealt with Peter Gadet to be frightened by what he could say? We have said it time and again that let the SPLM take its evidence to a court of law. No responsible government would use serious security allegations for propaganda purposes when people are dying. If what is said about Gadet is true, then he must have definitely mentioned who he dealt with. The party cannot be held responsible for actions of one or a number of its members however high in the hierarchy they may be unless those actions are proved beyond any reasonable doubt in a court of law that they were sanctioned by the party.
Third, it is also alleged that it is the Chairman who is making things difficult for party members to get government appointments, even some of us were quoted as saying that we cannot be in the opposition for life! Well, most of you were involved in our discussions with the SPLM. The SPLM did not even give a room for the Chairman to be blamed, like by offering us something that the Chairman rejected. The SPLM does not accept anything less than total submission to its whims. Those who did so got some of the crumbs, and some are still waiting to get their share. Those who want to join the queue can. But anybody who genuinely seeks change must be prepared for a hard struggle. After all, our party just marked its second birthday two months ago! Where is the long wait?
Fourth, it is rhetorically questioned why isn’t the Chairman breaking links with our party members in the North. When did it become an issue of the Chairman? Was not the NEC in its resolution No. 46 on 4/7/2011 which decided that certain procedures must be followed for a smooth disengagement between the northern and southern components of the party? Are these procedures complete? It will be morally repugnant and politically suicidal for our party just to abandon our comrades in the north who stood with us at difficult times. They will be an asset for us, if not for now in the future. The SPLM which is telling some of us this nonsense, has not cut links with their northern sector except in the press. Who is running the war in Southern Kordofan? Where is Yasir Arman now? Is he not with you in Juba?
Difficult Circumstances:
There is no denying of the fact that our party is undergoing difficult circumstances at the moment. It is being fought by the government of the day and can be dissolved at any moment. So, anybody who thinks that everything is normal must think again. We are not under normal conditions. I said it before that “when the walking gets tough, the tough gets walking”, when things are difficult only commitment to the cause keeps the torch burning. When the ship of Fidel Castro and his comrades landed on the Cuban coast from Mexico to launch their revolution, they were intercepted by the Batista forces with the help of the CIA. The whole force was annihilated, only five survived. These five reorganized and triumphantly liberated Cuba in less than a decade in 1959. Nothing is easy in change! I have also said that most of the parties operating in Sudan now were repeatedly dissolved by successive military regimes that have come and gone in Sudan (1958, 1969 and 1989). Yet, they still survive up to today, interestingly under the same leadership. The SPLM-DC is not less in resolve than those parties. So, the SPLM-DC may soon be dissolved, some of us, God forbid, may lose their lives, others may end up in jail, still others will quit the party, but a few will always remain to continue carrying the torch of change to be joined by many when the riding gets smooth. That is the course of history.
So, the Secretariat may diminish in size as the situation may dictate, it may even disappear altogether, nothing is ruled out. But surely the party will not die as long as there are people out there in South Sudan who are yearning for change. Never before has the future of so many depended on so few!
Conclusion:
Let us continue to discuss our party issues candidly and objectively. However, we must remain vigilant not to be infiltrated by the ideas of the opponents. Personal frustrations and disappointments should not rip us apart. If some of us see grass greener on the other side of the fence, they may go amicably without hard feelings. One day we may need each other again and work together.
Thanks.
Dr Lam Akol,
Chairman, SPLM-DC.
END.
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