National Dialogue’s co-chair says SPLM has built an authoritarian state following independence

JUBA – The co-chair of South Sudan’s National Dialogue, Angelo Beda, has said the SPLM party has built an authoritarian state in the world’s youngest country following independence from Sudan in July 2011.

Beda made the remarks during the National Conference of the National Dialogue at Freedom Hall in Juba on Tuesday.

“The people at the grassroots blame the crisis in the country, on the failure of leadership. Particularly under the ruling party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement. When we reference SPLM, we are talking about the SPLM before it broke into numerous factions as we know today,” he said.

“You cannot say you are IO, you are not part of it. You cannot say you are FD, you are not part of it. You cannot you are SSOA, you are also part of it. Because the people who broke, were on the top. And they broke and quarreled, and then engaged their tribes to fight; and things went wrong forever. So we blame the SPLM as such. Not just the one whom we are with here; but those who also left outside. The SPLM took helm of power in South Sudan, following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, CPA, in January 2005,” he added.

Beda said the SPLM party started in the wrong way when the then Southern Sudan became an independent state in 2011, and had also started with a wrong approach in 2005 when it risen to power in Southern Sudan.

“The failure of the leadership, and of the SPLM, is manifest in a number of ways. First, the SPLM and its leadership per previous provisions of the CPA, was charged to be the responsibility to build a new political system in South Sudan; that was to contrast the then existing system in the Sudan,” he said.

“So, the CPA said that, we now have the South; and it is given to SPLM to change your laws. So that it is different from the one of Northern Sudan; and then after that, we shall come to vote. So they wanted two systems, in one country. Two systems; Khartoum – North, Juba – South. With different system, but one country,” he added.

He further said that the SPLM “SPLA failed completely to build a new political system in South Sudan. So by the end of the six years’ interim period, the SPLA simply took the poorer version of the Sudanese state, and ran with it. Notably, the SPLM built an authoritarian system in the country, which is becoming more and more tyrannical; although without the substance and authority of a functioning state.”