![A group of opposition members during a rally in Jonglei State to declare their allegiance to President Salva Kiir’s SPLM faction. [Photo courtesy]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sudanspost.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/SPLM.jpg?resize=850%2C566&ssl=1)
The team led by Anter Bayak Kuol, a former member of parliament of Jonglei State, includes 170 people from the South Sudan United Movement (SSUM) and 43 from the main armed Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in Opposition (SPLM-IO) led by First Vice President Riek Machar.
SSUM is an opposition group founded by late renegade General Peter Gatdet Yaka. It is a founding member of the South Sudan Opposition Alliance (SSOA) and its leader is currently the governor of Jonglei State Jenay Jock Chagor.
Both SSOA and SPLM-IO are signatories to the revitalized peace agreement signed by Kiir’s then coalition government and several opposition groups in 2018 to end a deadly five-year-old civil war that had killed around half a million people.
Speaking during rally to declare their allegiance to Kiir in Jonglei State’s capital Bor yesterday, Bayak said they defected after they studied the SPLM documents, and they were impressed by the vision of the ruling SPLM party faction.
“We have made this decision after we received the Constitution and the Code of Conduct of the members of the SPLM. We loved the ideology embedded in those principles as found in the two documents, which underscored our decision,” he said.
The former member of parliament who resigned from his party in October this year after disagreements with Governor Chagor, his party leader, over the impeachment of the Jonglei State minister of finance praised the SPLM party for working for change.
“You have been working hard day and night trying by all means to bring genuine change and peace in the country despite all the hurdles that all always being laid on the way to true peace and justice as you dream of,” he said.
“I would like to bring to your attention my special recognition for your unwavering struggle and courage to walk and work in the sea of obstacles of tribal waves that have sucked our true humanity and leave our Country as nothing, but the country built on fiction and empty rhetoric represented by slogans of justice, liberty and prosperity,” he added.
The former member of parliament further said that the ruling party under Kiir is empowering young people in the world’s youngest country and claimed that the party has put down mechanisms for development of the country.
“SPLM party also empowering the young leaders that will pursue the upcoming SPLM leadership by offering regional training to capacity build the leadership and to boost political strategy. SPLM party have put up a new developmental policy for empowering the local communities at the grassroots levels,” he said.
“We observed from far that there’s a future for young people in SPLM. We have decided to join the SPLM party officially without reservations in order to work amicably with colleagues and comrades in the entire SPLM institutions at the national level and states,” Bayak stated.
He further said that he and his group “will live by the SPLM principles as enshrined in its constitution and code of conduct. Therefore, we declare our commitment unconditionally for joining the SPLM” and then endorsed President Salva Kiir for president in the would-be 2024 elections.
“We the political members who have just joined the SPLM party we are fully support the endorsement of his excellence the president of the Republic of South Sudan and the Chairman of SPLM party, to be the flag bearer of the SPLM party in the next presidential election,” he added.
Meanwhile the leader of the SPLM-IO group Sabit Lam said they defected because young people don’t have a future in the main armed opposition SPLM-IO and that they see their potential being guaranteed in the SPLM faction under President Kiir.
“I joined SPLM-IO in 2014 voluntarily but up to 2016 I became a full committed member SPLM-IO participating in all the political activities that are supervised by the SPLM-IO leadership,” the defecting SPLM-IO official said.
“The policy that were decimated by the SPLM-IO during this civil war and those that were formulated into the document were irrelevant. There is a different between the talks only and something that is documented,” he added.
He said the many opposition groups in South Sudan do not have a vision apart from a “mere regime change agenda executed from abroad” and that they have failed to achieve it.
“The leadership of President Kiir have fought many opposition groups in South Sudan that were claiming that they are fighting for regime change and the reform in the country of which they even failed. There are individuals that wants leadership by shortcut but as they young people we don’t want to be part that,” he added.
