Media aide to Machar rips gov’t delegation over ‘dirty business’ to ‘buy’ allegiance

JUBA – A media aide to South Sudan’s First Vice President and main armed opposition leader Dr. Riek Machar Teny has ripped a government delegation that was in Khartoum last week for trying to ‘buy support and allegiance’ while a good portion of the country’s population starves to death over economic crisis.

Last weekend, South Sudan’s director of National Security Service (NSS), General Akol Koor Kuc, and President Salva Kiir’s security advisor, Tut Gatluak, met in Khartoum with controversial SPLM-IO commander, General Johnson Olony, in an effort to convince him to abandon the Machar-led movement in return for a senior army position.

Olony who was first nominated by Machar for governor of Upper Nile state but was rejected by Kiir blatantly rejected the attempt, according to his close aides, asking the delegation what has since changed with the South Sudanese president who had rejected him in unfounded account that he is a “war-monger.”

The government delegation returned to Juba on Monday with many on social media mocking the spy chief and and Kiir’s advisor for failure to fulfill a ‘desperate’ mission that many described as an attempt to further jeopardize the already fragile opposition unity.

Reacting on social media to the ‘empty-handed’ return of the delegation from Khartoum, Gordon Yien Gordon, the deputy press secretary at the office of the first vice-president mocked and criticized the delegation over efforts to destroy innocent lives.

“The enthusiasm and zeal these people have to finance war and destroy innocent lives and properties is beyond description,” he wrote on Facebook. “I wish if they were to use such money and logistics for implementation of the 2018 peace agreement. I wish such money were given to vulnerable people and the poor to sustain their life.”

The close Machar aide further highlighted how some unnamed parties to the revitalized peace agreement are working to derail the revitalized peace agreement by traveling the world to fulfill the cause of creating insecurity in the world’s youngest country despite the immense suffering.

“Unfortunately, some parties to the Revitalised peace agreement are ready to travel anywhere on earth just to buy support and allegiance in order to create insecurity in the country. What a dirty business!” he said, adding: “The people of South Sudan need peace not war.”