Is Dr. Luka Biong unwittingly setting himself up for a peace spoiler tag?
By Deng Vanang, Kampala, Uganda
Sunday, July 8, 2018 (PW) — Swinging full throttle into the depth of 21 years’ liberation war against an Afro-Arab north armed with an academic pedigree of a PhD, Dr. Luka Biong Deng inarguably became one of rare gems in a mixed bag of semi-literate lot.
A rarity which helped him make a pass one on several other scrambling pretenders for the proximity to the throne when he mounted the summit of previously crafted autonomous government of South Sudan. The steady climb landed him in a plumb post of a cabinet Affairs’ Minister.
Effectively a third in command away from the heart breathe of number one executive slot, the Presidency.
Only to be pulled down to the foot from the hillcrest after stepping on the toes of indispensably powerful post liberation war political dinosaurs.
In what was a likened to a tactical retreat, he slipped back into an academia hopefully to while away time before he could stage a vengeful comeback to the cabinet once more.
The dream was nipped in its pipe and never came to pass. For the long hand of the government grudgingly followed and finally knocked him off the cliff onto which he was desperately hanging into the wilderness when pronounced stateless in 2016 to the public outcry.
Simply by virtue of being citizen of disputed Abyei region whose fate hangs in the balance of the fault lines of on and off perennial rivals, the two Sudans.
Now stateless and declared persona non grata in a country he calls home, Dr. Biong finds himself grappling with fate of cutting an edge for himself to fight multifaceted fronts.
These are namely Sudan which lays claim to his Abyei region, crucifixion of his region on political expediency by South Sudan and his unceremonious eviction from the latter.
Dug into the throes of his own wars, Dr. Biong is unwittingly at the risk of sparing for a peace spoiler tag at the tail end of South Sudanese civil war.
Particularly when voicing anger before ink dried on recently signed Khartoum declaration by President Salva Kiir and SPLM/A-IO’s leader, Dr. Riek Machar alongside other political forces in the country.
He was quoted in Kenya’s leading daily nation newspaper of Friday 29th June by its South Sudanese correspondent in Juba, Joseph Oduho as saying: South Sudanese should protest against Khartoum declaration because it takes away their sovereignty to decide the type of peace they want as well as being brokered by one of the most repressive regimes in the world, the ruling National Congress Party in the Sudan.
No doubt the Khartoum declaration shall end up in the dustbin like the Khartoum Peace Agreement of 1997 having signed by weak armed groups, Biong threw his jab and any attempt to swallow his venomous words so far is drowned in the echoes of his vociferous past of an anti-peace crusader.
His earlier verbal salvo could be interpreted as a calculated strategy to heap pressure on government side to violate ceasefire agreement he doesn’t like.
With his later rallying call to make oil a nonissue in the ongoing peace deal and retrenchment of Kiir and Machar from politics to give peace a chance all seem to be falling on deaf ears of those who may care to listen.
Needless to say he is making a mockery of his own career as peace researcher in search of peace worldwide.
In addition to being regarded as pushing personal vendetta against his perceived enemies behind the declaration and peddling falsehood in Western capitals under guise of scholarship as the global fellow at research peace institute in Oslo.
His tirades against possible peace deal are without taking into consideration the suffering of South Sudanese people of which he is not oblivious since he and his immediate family members are enjoying good life in safety of the West away from the agony facing the ordinary people for the last five years.
He is not even aware of the fact that the people he is calling for to protest against what he terms as bad peace are not even there in S. Sudan since they are in foreign countries as refugees.
These countries he disparagingly calls foreign are the ones hosting them as well as helped broker the recent declaration that will serve as their life line should it hold.
He is moreover not coming to terms with one resolute reality that no nation is fully sovereign in the UN charter.
Which duly says all UN member states are bound by history of their essence as byproducts of one another that obliges them to cooperate in both bad and good times.
And not forgetting Khartoum peace agreement he referred to as bad one is internationally known to be what birthed his pet project, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, CPA that finally delivered the independence and the country he wants to belong tooth and nail.
Deng Vanang is the Secretary for Information, Public Relations and Spokesperson for Federal Democratic Party/South Sudan Armed Forces, FDP/SSAF. He is cordially reachable at: dvanang@gmail.com
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