Political tension in Juba… back messages to the government and the opposition!
*Mathiang Cirilo
It actually appears, based on the factual data following the press conference by the official spokesman for the government, Michael Makuei Lueth, and the official spokesman for the opposition, Pal Mai Deng, who also holds the position of Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources, that the situation is heading towards calm, contrary to the expectations and “wishes” that were deliberately and premeditatedly promoted, that Juba is heading towards boiling with the escalation of security tensions in Nasir County, Upper Nile State.
*The most prominent indicator of the calm is that the Army Commander in Nasir, Major General Major Dak, is on his way back to Malakal and then to Juba, following direct intervention from the First Vice President of the Republic, Dr. Riek Machar, through the commissioner of Nasir County, “who belongs to his movement.” Despite a slight obstruction that forced the UN plane to return back to Malakal without completing the evacuation process, the operation may be completed today, Thursday, and will be followed by the release of the detained leaders of the SPLM IO, where it is clear that their arrest was merely pressure on the opposition to move towards the path of calm in exchange for the release of the detainees and detainees (Deputy Chief of Staff, Minister of Petroleum, Assistant Chief of Staff for Moral Guidance, Inspector General of the Army, etc.), although this idea, despite its quick results, cannot be an ideal model for dealing with such crises that require quick political solutions instead of a military or security solution approach.
What happened in Juba and Nasir opens the way for the main parties in the revitalized peace agreement, Kiir and Machar, to search for other models to address the immediate challenges through a political map far from quarrels and tactics, which have confirmed, through popular reactions, that the option of returning to violence and abolishing the current state of fragile stability in the country is completely rejected, and this point requires a special pause by the President of the Republic and his First Vice President. In addition, the current treatment of this crisis will lead to avoiding what happened in the future, especially since voices within Nasir have risen in order to avoid the disaster so that external parties do not turn this region into another arena for armed confrontations and search for another, radical approach for the matter.
*On the other hand, the process of repeating such crises has led to an increase in the levels of popular discontent with the two “main parties in the peace process” and I expect during the coming days that the areas of popular pressure will expand in order to accelerate the implementation of the terms of the agreement to bring everyone to the elections. The result so far is that there is a peace agreement that is not being implemented in the required manner, and the prevailing obstacles reflect the absence of political will and the exploitation of this agreement by some politicians for personal and material gain, far from reversing their public gains, which will only culminate in the full and not selective implementation of the terms of the agreement.
- Finally, one of the reasons that led to calming the situation as well, is that the media coverage by foreign parties of what happened and the portrayal that there is a small bridge separating the distance between Nasir and Juba and thus Juba will turn into a ghost town, paved the way towards achieving this rapid progress towards calming in an indirect way. The writer is a journalist and presenter of the Mathiang Cirilo Show.
