Political rights and democratic transformation begins at home
Community Empowerment for Progress Organization-CEPO is South Sudan civil society organization registered by the Ministry of Legal Affairs and Constitutional Development in Republic of South Sudan. CEPO is engaged in the areas of conflict mitigation, peace, human rights, and rule of law, governance, democratic transformation and livelihood.
CEPO feels that South Sudan political parties’ leaders should have obligations for ensuring democracy and political rights that are enshrined in their respective parties manifestos, objectives are respected, fulfilled and honor by them first then followed by the party members. The undermining of this consent by the party leaders have created the current political frictions within the parties leadership that are within whether being acknowledged as facts or not in SANU, UDF, USDF and SPLM-DC.
CEPO becomes concern about this because how much we call for democratization of governance and leadership including institutionalization of processes and decisions, if the political parties leaders are not practicing democracy and allowing political rights to prevail within their parties’ deals, it is not hold water though how much we struggle achieve democratic transformation for calculating the path for inclusive and peaceful governance.
Hence CEPO is calling for South Sudan political parties leaders to commit themselves in person for upholding democracy and good governance in their respective parties before seeking opportunities for the public or state office. CEPO do acknowledge that any political figure commitment for democratic system and particularly for prevalence of political rights is realized right from his/her time within the party.
The current political disputes merging within the South Sudan political parties leaderships are worrying because one day it will mount into a violent situation that will have negative implications on the meaning of politics and this may discourage the citizen civic engagement in national issues that have direct link to political life.
CEPO is urging the South Sudan political parties’ leaders in particular to disengage themselves from the political culture of personalizing party affairs for fulfillment of self interest. The government of South Sudan should enact the South Sudan political parties act in order to avoid personalization of party leaders and/or co-founders.
Political Parties Press Release.docx
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