Pagan Amum and the SPLM-DC Phobia

(08/02/2010, SPLM-DC) In the last few weeks up to yesterday, Pagan Amum of the SPLM has been feeding the press with a pack of nonsensical statements about the SPLM-DC that can only mean one thing: the man is out of balance. He said that the nomination of Dr Lam Akol for the office of President of the Government of Southern Sudan was the work of the NCP. He went as far as claiming that it was the NCP that collected the names of registered voters that seconded his nomination. Not only is this balderdash but it is a reflection of the state of mind of somebody suffering from both inferiority complex and sense of guilt.

It is a well known fact that the birth of SPLM-DC was mainly because of the exclusive politics Pagan Amum and his group followed in the SPLM. He, in particular, felt dwarfed by the presence of some giants in the SPLM and therefore used every trick he can think of to drive them away. His group was blindly fighting his personal vendetta and war of exclusion. When the SPLM-DC was publicly launched on the 6th of June 2009, Pagan’s public comment was that it was the work of the NCP and in any case was born dead!

As time went by and the Sudanese, especially Southern Sudanese, were joining SPLM-DC in their hundreds of thousands, the reaction of Pagan and his group was first to obstruct its registration with the Political Parties Affairs Council. We all know how billions of pounds were spent to win over some week-kneed elements within us to do this dirty job. After a long struggle we managed to get registered on the 12th of October 2009, four months after the launching of the party’s public activities. Waking up to this reality, what Pagan and his group resorted to in order to stop the swelling support for the SPLM-DC was to deny it the freedom to operate in Southern Sudan on a ludicrous allegation that it owned militia!

The SPLM had the opportunity to prove that claim of theirs (that the SPLM-DC owns militia) before the Constitutional Court when SPLM-DC sued the Government of Southern Sudan on the 25th of November 2009 for denying it its constitutional right of free expression and association. However, as we all now know from the proceedings of that suit which have been made public, their lawyer never mentioned anything of that sort. It was a short-legged lie meant to protect their crumbling empire from the unstoppable advance of the SPLM-DC. He thought the ban on the SPLM-DC and the harassment of its members would scare off people from joining it. Yes, he did scare off a few and made our work very difficult, but to their chagrin tens of thousands continued and continue to operate underground to promote the cause of democratic change.

Pagan Amum knows quite well that he will sooner or later be held responsible for having divided the SPLM, for supervising over its downward slide and for having misled the SPLM leadership about the real strength of SPLM-DC. He therefore does not want to acknowledge the reality that the SPLM-DC does exist. Anything the SPLM-DC does must be ascribed to the NCP! But, Mr Ostrich is now rudely reminded that his malicious acts are catching up on him. We need to jog his mind on the following:

1. The nomination of Dr Lam Akol was made by the Alliance of Southern Sudan Political Parties (ASSPP) on the 16th of November 2009, well before his party could settle its nominees for any position.
2. Our party is well organized and knows the elections rules very well. We quietly collected the required signatures quite early when Pagan and Co were slumbering. When they woke up we were already in Juba which they thought it was an area we will not set foot in.
3. The NCP announced in a press conference on Wednesday the 27th of January that it will support Salva Kiir’s candidature for the office of the President of the Government of Southern Sudan. Pagan cannot deny this. Such an announcement was to be expected because the two are partners. That does not bother us an iota because we are confident to win the contest. Also, right now, our candidates in ALL the constituencies we are contesting in are facing a challenge from candidates of both the SPLM and NCP. How then can the SPLM-DC be one and the same with the NCP? Give us a break! We assure Pagan and Co. that we are going to defeat both parties if the elections are truly free and fair.
4. The SPLM is heading for an imminent defeat in the polls come April 2011. The exclusion politics of pagan Amum and his group have now opened up the flood gates of accumulated anger within the rank and file of the SPLM as shown by the multitude of independent candidates who stand to beat the hand-picked “official’ candidates of the SPLM. Pagan threatened to dismiss them but the Political Bureau did not heed his advice and resolved instead to seek dialogue with the rebels. If he had dignity, he should resign his position as the Secretary General of the party. A house divided cannot stand.
5. Pagan Amum is the only Secretary General of any party that has not put his name forward for election. This tells much about his unpopularity.
6. The intrinsic fear of Pagan and his group from the NCP stems from an inferiority complex. If the NCP was that powerful as they make us believe, the SPLM would have lost the war and would not have reached a peace agreement with the Government of Sudan which was dominated by the NCP. In the scheme of things according to Pagan Amum, somebody other than them must always be blamed for SPLM’s failures. This will not rescue him. After all, the driving away of Mr Jones from George Orwell’s Animal Farm did not stop it from collapse!

We are on the threshold of an election campaign. We hope Pagan Amum would steer away from personal vendetta and focus on the issues that concern our people. Otherwise, he will be returned in his own coin. Those in glass houses should not throw stones.

The Information Department,
SPLM-DC