Makuei threatens counties may be allocated without SPLM-IO

JUBA – South Sudan’s information minister and government spokesman Michael Makuei Lueth has threatened that the government may work to expedite the process of the local governments formation without the main armed opposition group SPLM-IO.

This comes after the Machar-led movement pulled out of talks for consultation after the government insisted that it is not willing to allocate some counties to the opposition group in all the ten states.

Speaking to Sudans Post this evening, Makuei said the SPLM-IO is using delay tactics to prolong the suffering of the people of South Sudan threatening that the government may work to allocate the counties without the consent of the SPLM-IO.

“There is a delaying tactic from there,” Makuei said. “But what we are going to do as the ruling party is that we will not accept that these people prolong the suffering of the people of South Sudan because after all, it is me, it is Salva [Kiir], and others in the SPLM-IG that are going to be blamed if anything went wrong.”

Makuei said all the counties in the country are not different from each other saying “there is no bad counties and good counties in this country. The counties that they are asking for are all dominated by the government and the SPLM-IO has no present.”

Media officials of the main armed opposition group were not immediately reachable for comments.

In recent weeks, the government and the SPLM-IO have been exchanging barbs over the issue of the governor of the country’s Upper Nile state. The SPLM-IO in June nominated powerful opposition military officer, General Johnson Olony Thabo for governor of the oil-rich Upper Nile state.

However, president Salva Kiir Mayardit said he will not appoint Olony claiming that the opposition commander is a warmonger who, according to him, would complicate efforts to reconcile the people of Upper Nile state, a claim the president could not prove.