Detained South Sudanese opposition leader ousted amid party division
Some Sudan People Liberation Movement-In-Opposition leaders loyal to Rick Machar, who remains under house arrest, skipped the meeting in which the country's minister of peacebuilding, Stephen Kuol Par, was named interim chair. Some Machar loyalists have fled the country.
When asked if his appointment was a coup against Machar, Par said it wasn't.
'What we have done is to resolve this leadership crisis that has been created by the crisis that comes as a result of the detention of our chairman and the desertion of our other leaders like the deputy chair and the secretary general,' he said.
Par appealed for the release of Machar and other senior SPLM-IO members who were detained following deadly violence in the country's north.
'This act of detention undermines the principles of peace and dialogue essential for our nation's recovery,' he said.
The party on Tuesday cautioned its members not to attend Wednesday's meeting, accusing the meeting's organizers of being 'political brokers who have been suspended from the SPLM-IO party.'
In a Wednesday post on Facebook, SPLM-IO spokesperson Lam Paul Gabriel called Par and those who did attend the meeting 'betrayers.'
There were high hopes when oil-rich South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011 after a long conflict. But the country slid into a civil war in December 2013 largely based on ethnic divisions when forces loyal to President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, battled those loyal to Machar, an ethnic Nuer.
More than 400,000 people were killed in the war, which ended with a 2018 peace agreement that brought Kiir and Machar together in a unity government. Under the agreement, elections were supposed to be held in February 2023, but they were postponed until December 2024 — and again until 2026.
The latest tensions stem from fighting in the country's north between government troops and a rebel militia, known as the White Army, which is widely believed to be allied with Machar, who serves as one of the country's vice presidents.
Par's appointment as the SPLM-IO's interim chair comes two days after exiled party deputy Oyet Nathaniel suspended him and three other members, accusing them of fostering disunity and conspiring with Kiir to replace Machar.
Par dismissed the suspension, calling it 'the joke of the year" and saying the party 'cannot be led or take orders from self-exiled leaders.'
Despite fears that the recent violence, arrests and accusations could signal that South Sudan is teetering on the edge of a renewed civil war, some analysts say the change in SPLM-IO leadership may not necessarily scuttle the 2018 peace deal.
Abraham Kuol Nyuon, dean of the graduate college at the University of Juba, said the peace deal could be implemented by anybody within the party, though he warned that internal divisions could also widen.
'The peace agreement will not collapse, but it will be shaking in the way that there will be suspension for those who are loyal to Machar and the supporters of Machar will then fight the system,' Kuol told The Associated Press.
Kuol said the interim leaders should be able to convince the citizens and the international community why and by what principles they want the peace agreement to continue.
South Sudan's political climate remains fragile after White Army overran and army base in the north and government troops responded with airstrikes. Government forces also staged two attacks on opposition forces' training barracks outside the capital, Juba.
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