In an interview with Sudans Post on Tuesday, Pagan who is the leader of the holdout Real-SPLM and spokesman of the parties outside the revitalized peace agreement said South Sudan has been in a cycle of violent conflict that always lead to peace deals that eventually return the country to violence.
“South Sudan has been in the vicious cycle that starts with a failed transitional and dysfunctional government leading to eruption of war before the elections like what happened in 2013,” he said from the United States.
“Then the parties to the conflict sit around a table, reach an agreement, form a government, a transitional government, from the parties to the conflict, a government that becomes dysfunctional and divided, lacking political will to implement the agreement, then the transitional period fails again and the country fail to usher in peace, a sustainable peace and peaceful democracy and that failure leads again to war with attempts of extensions leading to these disagreements again and dispute like the situation we are now having in the country today,” he added.
The former SPLM Secretary General warned that should the ruling party decide to extend the transitional period or organize disputed elections, the chances for the country returning to violence will be higher as results of that election will likely be contested.
“The situation now is that if the SPLM-IG attempt to extend the transitional period, this could lead to war erupting again. Secondly, if the SPLM-IG conduct elections in a situation where the requirement for the conduct of free and fair elections are nonexistence, this conduct of such elections will be contested and the results will also be contested and may lead to violence and war erupting again in the country,” he said.
He urged all South Sudanese stakeholders, including the signatories to the revitalized peace agreement, activists, women and faith-based groups, to come together in a roundtable conference outside South Sudan to agree on the way forward to rescue the world’s youngest country from returning back to conflict.
“This situation needs us, as South Sudan stakeholders to put our hands and heads together to break this vicious cycle. In the collective efforts to rescue our country, our country we the non-signatories to the revitalized agreement are calling on all South Sudanese stakeholders from civil society organizations, spiritual leaders, women organizations, and youth organizations for all of us to come together to rescue our country and to break this vicious cycle, come together in a roundtable conference to build a national consensus on the way forward to take our country into peace and democracy,” he said.
“Let’s come together in avenue where we can freely discuss the problems we are facing and the country is facing and agree on a new transition and we ensure that this new transition will overcome all the factors and the causes that led to our failure and failure of our transitional government in the past,” he stressed.
TECHNOCRATIC GOVERNMENT
Pagan said the stakeholders should agree, in the would-be roundtable conference, to the formation of a technocratic government without the involvement of political parties which he said shall wait for conduct of free and fair elections.
“We believe that it is possible for South Sudanese stakeholders to agree to a formation of a government of by independent professional south Sudanese who are not affiliated to the political parties,” the opposition leader said.
“It is also possible for South Sudanese to agree that our new transitional government will be formed by these South Sudanese technocrats and the political parties will agree to stay out of this transitional government, organize themselves and prepare themselves for the free and credible elections that will be organized by this neutral government,” he added.
He further said that the “transitional government of technocrats will have a program that the parties or the stakeholders, South Sudanese stakeholders will agree to, a program to implement, particularly a program to stabilize the country that will ensure the return and resettlement of our internally displaced people and our refugees back to their homes where they are assisted with rehabilitation programs so as to help rebuild their broken lives. “
PEACE ROADMAP
Last week, the presidency said President Kiir received a peace roadmap from a committee he had formed. The committee is composed of an all-SPLM party membership and the presidency said the roadmap would guide the country towards elections by developing a clear timeframe for the completion of the remaining tasks of the revitalized peace agreement.
But the SPLM-IO distanced itself from the roadmap and said it was not consulted and would scrutinize the agreement so as to come out with an opinion on it. The NDM also said exclusion of other signatories to the agreement makes the roadmap not reliable and called for an inclusive process.
Pagan said the ruling party is imposing its will on other signatories of the agreement citing the absence of other political parties from parliament and the development of the roadmap without the participation of other political groups.
“The parliament itself is divided as we speak and the SPLM-IG caucus is imposing its will on the others in total violation of the agreement and the SPLM-IG – we are told – has now developed a roadmap supposedly to guide the country to the end of the transitional period which will end with the conduct of a free and fair election, according to them. But now, this roadmap is developed without the participation of all the parties to the agreement,” he said.