Machar promises no return to violence

JUBA – South Sudan’s First Vice President, Dr. Riek Machar Teny, and leader of the main opposition group, Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in Opposition (SPLM-IO), has promised that the country will never to return to violence again.

Dr. Machar made this promise during the launch of the SPLM-IO Secretariat office in Juba on Saturday.

“We are committed to seeing that there is the transformation in the country and there is the transition from war to peace and there is the transition from resolving issues by violence to peaceful solutions and that is why we have up today held on, move on, and pushing slowly even if the implementation of the agreement has been very deadly slow,” Machar said on Saturday.

Dr. Machar reaffirmed his commitment to fully implement the 2018 revitalized peace deal in letter and spirit in order to restore peace and stability in the African youngest nation.

“Our people have been looking forward to a day when they will leave the past behind, the violence and things of the past and anything to be resolved peacefully,”

Machar has expressed hope for a new democratic dispensation in the country adding that “The country is moving toward new dispensation, the dispensation of freedom, democracy, and justice.”

The world’s newest nation declared independence from Sudan on July 9, 2011.

Just two years later it was plunged into a devastating civil war that claimed almost 400,000 lives and displaced four million people.

Despite a 2018 ceasefire between South Sudan President Salva Kiir and his former rival Dr. Riek Machar who now serves as the country’s first vice president, the country remains in the grip of political instability, economic ruin, and a deep hunger crisis.