Kiir who doubles as the Chairman of the SPLM party was speaking at the SPLM House on Wednesday in Juba during the swearing ceremony of the group’s acting secretary-general, Peter Lam Both, who was nominated to replace now speaker of parliament Jemma Nunu Kumba last month as Secretary-General.
“The movement [SPLM] is the people’s choice and if we weren’t the people’s choice, we would have not come this far from 1983 up to 2005. The people of South Sudan stood with us and by our side, but what have we done to the people? We are supposed to pay them back, we owe them,” Kiir said.
He urged end to internal power wrangling within the SPLM party which he said is a shameful because the party won’t be able to deliver on promises the group made to the people of South Sudan during the liberation struggle and further urged the leaders of the group to unity to avoid further conflicts in the country.
“How and when are we going to pay them back if we are fighting among ourselves? If we continue to fight one another, we will not be able to pay them back, this is shameful on us. We are the men and women who are heroes and heroines of this country because we fought until we brought independence of South Sudan, but by fighting among ourselves,” he said.
“We have disappointed our people. Let us accept one another and be children of one husband and one wife,” he added.
President Salva Kiir Mayardit has repeatedly admitted that, the SPLM party has failed to address all these problems affected citizens in South Sudan but some years later on, he will not show any improvement. The reason why the SPLM party has failed the country is because the most people who are running South Sudan government are from Khartoum government and those SPLM Officials have been sidelined because Dr. John Garang is not alive anymore.
In fact that, the people who came from Khartoum government are South Sudanese people and they have rights to be treated with respect or giving them jobs opportunity however, they should not be allowed to drive us away from our vision and the mission of the SPLA and SPLM. The SPLA/ SPLM vision and the mission were to change Old Sudan’s government and replace with good governance systems. In case for South Sudan independence, we can still apply those our objectives and to make sure our government is setting correctly unfortunately, this is not the case. You the President has not allow South Sudanese people to do the right things.
We fought for nepotism used by Arabs, we fought for Mistreatment by Arabs, we fought neglected people, we fought for individuals rights, citizens rights, freedom of speech and freedom of expression, we fought for unbalanced power sharing and budgets but now the President Salva Kiir Mayardit is using Arabs policy while, he is talking about the failure of his government and he is the one who can do right things. The President is the one who can shown pathway of future like Rwanda President. The South Sudanese President has allowed massive corruption in his government and he forgives them while, they took hundreds of billions dollars and hiding outside Africa. The President Salva Kiir Mayardit was not able to quell insecurity a cross the country, he is not controlling the country and also he has been rewarding rebels with big money or positions and this is why everyone is fighting in order to be rewarded. I think the blame goes to President himself because he is the head of State.