Surrender of The Opposition

To whom it may concern:

Subject: Surrender of the Opposition.

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing to inform you – the Opposition members who find themselves redundant in the States of our nascent Republic – to be politically aware. I recognize the great sacrifice you are making as citizens to the cause of realizing peace and prosperity for our civil population. However, three years have now elapsed since the signing of the Revitalized Agreement and one year since the formation of the unity government.

Compatriots!

The writing is on the wall, as it were. The Agreement exists only as a well written document and it has the potential to restore some sanity to our politics if implemented in good faith. Unfortunately, the Agreement is not being implemented in good faith. We can blame the SPLM-IG until the cows come home, in the end it will not solve anything. It is important for the revolutionary forces in our country to pause and have a moment of self-reflection and criticism. The struggle for positions, under the guise of fighting from within has now failed.

Individual civil servants are not the cause of systemic failure in our country; it is deeper than that and the reform agenda is the solution. Being a constitutional post holder within the context of the status quo and thinking one can make change, is delusional at best. A National Minister can be removed from a plane by some little guy in slippers chewing sa’wut (snuff in the local vernacular) in Juba International Airport (JIA). We have been hearing news of opposition leaders being humiliated and roughed up across the country. There is no change.

It is just mischief’!

This should not come as a surprise to these opposition leaders. It should have been expected. The opposition rushed to Juba to form a so-called unity government before the security arrangements were completed. This essentially means the IG – as one of the parties – enjoys a monopoly of violence, which should be shared by all the parties until the army is unified. Anything short of this is surrender and this reality is what is reflected in the attitudes of many of the IG supporters.

I do not blame these fellow citizens, all feelings are valid. When the opposition groups prioritized the division of jobs over security arrangements, the incumbent knew the opposition has surrendered to the status quo and all they wanted were political jobs. In their thinking – regime supporters – the opposition should just come back home and be seen but not heard.

There has been no dissemination of the Agreement, so that our people understand that we have become one people. This should be done by a team from the level of the Presidency to the local Administrations. This would help our civil population understand that we are in the process of peace implementation. At the moment, the politics in our country is still aggressively tribal.

In many of the states in which Jieng/Dinka people live, the word “viva” is a word in the Nuer language. In areas where the civil population has been bamboozled, they have been led to believe that the Nuer are coming to finish them. So when SPLM-IO members go to Northern Bahr-el-Gazal, with not even a security guard and shout “viva,” it causes insecurity. The objective realities across the country are not conducive for the programs of the opposition. If the opposition has failed to get anything significant done at the level of the Presidency and the Ministers have failed, what then gives us the idea that we shall succeed in the States and Counties? If our intention was never to surrender to the status quo, we should at least admit that we have gone astray.

It is everyday reasoning that the past becomes the future. This is not true, that is called trauma and we are suffering from generational trauma. The past flows from the present. The mistakes we made in the past were made in real time, when it was the present, before becoming the past. If we want to change our painful past – and “yes we can” – it will depend on what we do today. Our historic struggle – which gave us political independence – reached this far because of revolutionary corrections. It is not because no mistakes were made. If we insist on maintaining the same course, we should at least make it as a conscious decision.

A luta continua!

Cpt. Mabior Garang
Mobile Office

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