Lam Akol brushes aside speculations of returning to SPLM’s fold
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October 1, 2011 (NAIROBI) – South Sudan’s renegade opposition leader
Lam Akol has dismissed as “rubbish” speculations that his meeting last
week with the country’s president Salva Kiir was a prelude to his
return to the mainstream Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM).
JPEG - 23.7 kb
South Sudan’s opposition Leader Lam Akol (www.aufaitmaroc.com)
Akol, who is the leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement
Democratic Change (SPLM-DC), a splinter faction of the ruling SPLM in
South Sudan, held a meeting on Thursday, 29 September, with South
Sudan’s president and SPLM’s chairman Salva Kiir in the Kenyan capital
Nairobi.
The meeting, which surprised observers given the bitter animosity that
characterized relations between the two parties, was followed by
remarks in which Kiir announced that Akol would soon be seen in South
Sudan’s capital Juba to rejoin the domestic political arena in the
newly independent country on the ticket of his party.
In an interview with Sudan Tribune from Nairobi on Friday, 30
September, Akol said that he did not seek to involve any foreign
interlocutors in brokering his meeting with Kiir.
He revealed that the genesis of the meeting dates back to March this
year when he sent a letter to Kiir who later met with a delegation of
the SPLM-DC in June.
Akol said that his meeting with Kiir had mainly focused on issues
related to opening the political space in the south and providing all
political parties with guarantees to operate.
According to the SPLM-DC leader, his party has had difficulties
operating in the south.
In November 2009, in the run-up to April’s general elections, Kiir
ordered authorities in South Sudan, then a semi-autonomous region, to
allow all political parties to operate freely except the SPLM-DC.
Reacting to a question on whether he might end up rejoining the
mainstream SPLM from which he split to form the SPLM-DC in June 2009,
Akol termed such speculations as “rubbish,” adding that this would not
happen because the SPLM-DC was the main opposition party.
Akol also sought to discredit reports of his party’s implosion, saying
those who recently defected were bought by the SPLM, in reference to
the party’s former secretary-general Sandra Bona Malwal and her group
who declared their defection in September this year.
He said that his party aims to play a leading role in the opposition
in the post-independence South, stressing the importance of national
unity in order to tackle the challenges facing the budding nation.
“We look at opposition as a mean to keep the government on check. We
are a mirror through which the government can see its success and
failures. In that respect, we need to help the president succeed” he
said.
(ST)
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