Machar says Gen. Gatwech’s defection ‘engineered by peace spoilers’

JUBA — South Sudan’s main armed opposition leader and the country’s First Vice President Dr. Riek Machar Teny has accused unnamed ‘peace spoilers’ of standing behind his military chief’s defection from the SPLM/A-IO.

On Tuesday, General Simon Gatwech Dual, former SPLM-IO chief of General Staff, announced following a ‘meeting’ in Magenis of top opposition commanders that Machar was no longer the SPLM/A-IO leader.

He accused Machar of betraying the cause of the movement and said he was taking over, deputized by former SPLA-IO sector one commander, General Johnson Olony Thabo, but said he was for the implementation of the revitalized peace agreement.

In a communique extended to Sudans Post following a meeting of the SPLM-IO Political Bureau in Juba, Machar said “the three Generals who met in Magenls do not constitute the SPLA (IO) leadership of the MIllitary Command Council.”

According to the communique signed by Machar himself, the SPLA-IO “Military Command Council is composed of the Commander-in-Chief, Chief of General Staff and his Deputies, Commanders of the nine Sectors, and Commander of the General Headquarters.”

He added that “At the time of the declaration, General Simon Gatwech Dual had already been relieved from command and appointed as Presidential Advisor for Peace.”

“However, the Military Command does not make the political decisions of the Movement but the Political Bureau or the National Liberation Council In absence of the National Convention.”

The powerful opposition chief further accused unnamed peace spoilers of engineering the defection of General Gatwech which now threatens to return the world’s youngest country to the devastating civil war it experienced during the past seven years.

“It is regrettable that the declaration was engineered and facilitated by peace spoilers who previously sponsored attacks on Turu cantonment site in Maiwut County, Liengklji cantonment site in Maban County in Upper Nile State, Moroto training centre in Kajo Keji County in Central Egoatoria, the attacks on SPLA(IO) in Western Bahr Al-Ghazal and Western Equatorla States,” the communique reads.

“The Polltical Bureau, therefore, condemns these grave vlolations In the strongest terms possible,” it said, adding that “The declaratlon was Intended to derall the formatlon of the unified command, graduation and the deployment of the unlfled forces, which remain an outstandIng priority after the concluslon of the reconstitution of the Natlonal Leglslature.”