Making Sense of the Stalemate over the Establishment of State Governments in South Sudan
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The tendency by peace partners to prefer talking past each other, rather than addressing their true positions, is the root cause of the stalemate over the appointment of state governors in South Sudan
ByPaanLuel Wël, Juba, South Sudan
Wednesday, April 8, 2020 (PW) — There are two competing readings to explain the grinding stalemate over the appointment of state Governors in South Sudan. The two main warring parties-turned-peace partners, the government and the SPLM-IO, have officially acknowledged the stalemate over the formation of state government; however, they have sharply differed in their readings and explanations of the root cause that has delayed the decree-ment of state governors.
To the SPLM-IO, the government is demanding six states, leaving only four states to the opposition parties, with two states going to the SPLM-IO, one to the South Sudanese Opposition Alliance (SSOA), which comprises of those opposition parties, armed or not, who were residing outside the country during the civil war. The other remaining state is given to the Other Political Parties (OPP), encompassing those unarmed opposition parties that were based in Juba during the civil war.
The fundamental problem, mainly to the SPLM-IO, is that this power sharing arrangement increases the percentage share of the government from 55% to 60%, and OPP’s percentage share from 8% to 10%, while reducing SPLM-IO’s percentage share from 27% to 20% of state government. This is a renegotiation, and thus a violation, of the revitalized peace agreement (R-ARCSS), which had guaranteed 27% of the states to the SPLM-IO and allocated only 55% to the government.
Consequently, the SPLM-IO prefers relying on the concrete values of those disputed percentages (decimal points) to resolve the stalemate. The prevailing argument is that the 7% (0.07) share of the SPLM-IO is greater than the 5% (0.05) share of the government and should therefore be rounded off to one, just like the 8% (0.08) percentage share of OPP, which was simply rounded off to one state.
To the SPLM-IO and their sympathizers, that entitles them to three states (30%) while the government settles for five states (50%), with one state (10%) going to the SSOA and another one (10%) to the OPP.
However, that formula, along with the attendant argument, is not acceptable to the government. To the government, the SPLM-IO is demanding 50-50 ratios in the allocation of gubernatorial posts. That is, government with five states while opposition parties shared the other five states – in the ratio of three states to the SPLM-IO, one state to the SSOA and another one to the OPP.
This is objectionable to the government because, the government maintains, it violates the spirit of the revitalized peace agreement (R-ARCSS) in which the government was assured of getting more than 51% at both the national and state levels of the power sharing arrangements. The gist of the argument is that anything less than 55% is not in the spirit under which the government negotiated and agreed to the signing of the revitalized peace agreement.
To accept five states is therefore a renegotiation of the revitalized peace agreement, reducing the government’s percentage share to nothing more than 50% and increasing SPLM-IO’s percentage share from 27% to 30%, and OPP’s percentage share from 8% to 10%. Yet, the premise of the peace agreement was based on the assurance that the government would still maintain their majority at all levels of the power sharing arrangements, relative to all opposition parties combined.
The stalemate is therefore occasioned by two factors. One, the insistence by the SPLM-IO to secure nothing less than the stipulated 27% as per the revitalized peace Agreement. Two, the demand by the government to get nothing less than 55% of the state government, informed by the argument that the government should hold and control more than 55% of the positions at all levels of government, more than the total percentage shares of opposition parties combined.
Seen from these two perspectives, the government and SPLM-IO are talking past each other without confronting their true respective positions. On the one hand, the government demands a share proportional to the spirit of the revitalized peace agreement (R-ARCSS) in which they were supposedly assured of 55% of the revitalized transitional government (R-TGONU); on the other hand, the SPLM-IO are relying on the concrete values of the percentage shares to determine who should be entitled to that extra state in question.
Therefore, the tendency by the peace partners to talk past each other is the root cause of the stalemate over the establishment of the state governments in South Sudan. This pestering problem is partly due to the fact that the revitalized peace agreement (R-ARCSS) was negotiated and signed within the framework of 32 states, but is now being implemented under 10 states paradigm.
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