GOSS says it’s ready to declare independence

Recently, top SPLM official Pagan Amum warned that the South will unilaterally declare independence if the North is bent on scuttling the referendum.

The CPA mandates Khartoum to make unity attractive to the South within the six year interim period by sharing power, sharing wealth and initiating development projects for the South to develop and its economy to catch with that of the North.

But four years down the line, the Southerners still feel oppressed, marginalised and that they are treated as second class citizens.

According to Eric Reeves, a Boston-based university professor, the NCP has held back the key concessions required for the democratic transformation that the peace deal promised, including a repeal of repressive laws and restoration of basic freedoms of association and expression, and it has blocked the actions necessary for a peaceful referendum, such as a credible census, demarcation of the North/South border, fuller wealth-sharing and de-escalation of local conflicts in the transitional areas of Abyei, South Kordofan/Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile.

The SPLM maintains that there is clear evidence of Khartoum sending weapons to militia groups in the South, as well as particular ethnic groups and to the Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda and now operating in northern Democratic Republic of Congo and Western Equatoria in Southern Sudan.

Apart from having to deal with proliferation of arms in the South, the GOSS is grappling with the issue of corruption, which Khartoum has been highlighting with relish.

Mr Duku does not dispute the existence of corruption and says there are individuals who have misappropriated public finances, especially revenue from oil.

“Sudan is not an island, there is corruption, but it is not sanctioned by the government of Southern Sudan. The government is doing all it can to fight this cancer, we cannot defend individuals who have committed crime. However, there is a problem in the institutions of governance, in that we have a weak judiciary and a police force that allows those who have misappropriated public resources to escape prosecution. You cannot fight corruption with weak institutions,” he said.

The CPA says, “At the end of the six years of interim period, there shall be an internationally monitored referendum organised jointly by the GOSS and the SPLM for the people of South Sudan to confirm the unity of the country by voting to adopt the system of government established under the peace agreement or vote for recession.”

and there is growing anxiety that the dates could be changed again given the growing tension between the North and the South.

The principle of Southern Sudan self-determination was established in the Machakos Protocol of July 2002.