Kiir-Machar power struggle ‘exclusively’ South Sudan problem, PCCA tells IGAD

JUBA — South Sudan’s civil rights movement, the People’s Coalition for Civil Action (PCCA), said Tuesday that the power struggle between President Salva Kiir Mayardit and his first deputy Dr. Riek Machar Teny is ‘exclusively’ the problem in the world’s youngest nation.

The two men signed a revitalised version of a 2015 peace agreement in Addis Ababa in September 2018. Known as ‘R-ARCSS’, the peace agreement has however failed to advance permanent peace and stability in the world’s youngest country given continued disagreements over advantages by the country’s most powerful politicians.

The PCCA was formed in August last year with aim of galvanising the people of South Sudan for uprising, accusing Kiir and Machar of failing to bring permanent peace following several years of war as well as signing of at least two peace agreements.

In a memo sent to the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the regional bloc which mediated South Sudan’s peace agreement, the PCCA said the regional mediation under the IGAD focused on creation of an agreement between Kiir and Machar to ensure power-sharing between the two men rather addressing the root causes of the conflict in South Sudan.

“We know that the IGAD mediators did an admirable job in trying to resolve the conflict in South Sudan. We however feel that an error was committed when the mediation focused on the creation of an elite pact that has no relation to the reality of the situation in the country,” the memo signed by the group’s leaders, Abraham Awolich, Rajab Muhades, and Joseph Akol Makeer, reads in part.

The document extended to Sudans Post went on to say that “the problem in South Sudan was defined exclusively as a power struggle between two people; President Kiir and Dr. Riek Machar” and that “there is some truth to this.”

While pointing to leadership shortcomings as cause of failure of the agreement, the group said the deal itself has largely focused on power sharing between the two and ignored the failure of leadership needed to implement the agreement.

“The ARCSS and the R-ARCSS have focused on resolving the power struggle between individuals, but the failure of leadership and of the state have all but been ignored,” the group said.