Africa-Press – South-Sudan. The head of the government delegation to the Kenya-led South Sudan peace process has declared the Tumaini Initiative as dead, stating that the opposition involved in the talks “has no case.”
Kuol Manyang Juuk – who is also the senior Presidential Advisor – said the United People’s Alliance wants to do away with the 2018 revitalized peace agreement.
“The R-ARCSS has not been dissolved, so it cannot be replaced by the Tumaini. All that they have quoted is 80 % of the chapters in the R-ARCSS incorporated into the Tumaini. It’s Tumaini 10%, which was not included in the R-ARCSS because you add the few to the majority, not the majority to the few,” he said.
“They had nothing much to contribute, just criticism. This shouldn’t be like this. It’s good, yes. These are good contributions, but they should not change the R-ARCSS. They can only be an annex to the R-ARCSS.
He said most of the concerns and demands raised by the opposition have already been addressed in the peace agreement.
Kuol described the Tumaini document, suggesting the leadership council to be the highest organ of the government as a ‘coup’.
“They wanted to do away with the R-ARCSS, and then Tumaini takes over, and they come as the authority of the land. But these are people who were members of the government, and whatever they said was not done by the government; they were a party to it. When they were there, there was a mistake; they were part of that.
According to Kuol, some of the opposition members are staying outside the country for years, renting or buying villas, questioning where they got the money from, if not from South Sudan, during their tenure in the government.
“Tumaini is dead. They had no case. If I told them, why do you want to open a Pandora box? You, Sumbeiywo, and Kenya. If you give these people to climb to the highest office, then you are telling me also to rebel. I get my five people, and we come to Kenya, and we call the government for peace talks. There must be a system.
“You can’t just say anybody jumping out to say, I have a case with the government, I must be giving a condition. So it’s dead. Tumaini is dead.”
He added that the government of South Sudan also questioned its Kenyan counterpart for allowing the United People’s Alliance to form a military wing in Nairobi, citing the East African Community bloc.
Kuol said that during the negotiation, the UPA demanded three governorship positions, namely, Northern Bahr el Ghazal, Unity, and Upper Nile states, respectively.
The peace negotiation led by Kenya, which brought on board opposition groups that were not part of the 2018 peace deal, was adjourned for the third time on February 7 without an agreement.
The Tumaini Initiative aimed to resolve South Sudan’s prolonged instability and harmonize fractured political and military actors towards the goal of transitioning the country to democracy and lasting peace.
The Nairobi-led peace negotiations for South Sudan were adjourned in early February at the request of the government delegation.
In an earlier statement, Dr. Martin Elia Lomuro, the rapporteur for the governments’ delegation to Tumaini Initiative, mentioned that the team needed to finalize the two extended roadmaps, which were announced on the 21st. Dr. Lomuro did not specify when the team would return to the negotiation table.
At the time, the parties had agreed to expand the institutions established in the remaining provisions for the implementation of the R-ARCSS, to include the opposition and other stakeholders.
However, in a twist of events, key SPLM-IO leaders, including former Petroleum Minister Puot Kang, who was the deputy head of the delegation to the talks, were arrested following the Nasir incident.
This has brought the implementation of the 2018 peace accord to a standstill.
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