South Sudan’s main opposition party, the SPLM-IO, has rejected a presidential plea for dialogue, citing stalled peace talks and a tense political environment. The opposition’s spokesperson, Pal Mai Deng, stated that President Salva Kiir must release political and military leaders who are currently detained to demonstrate any genuine commitment to dialogue.
President Kiir, during the reopening of parliament, had emphasized the need for unity and national reconciliation, telling the nation that the “doors of peace remain open.” He stressed that the suffering of the South Sudanese people “must not be prolonged by the continued rejection of dialogue.”
However, this call for unity is being met with skepticism. Vice President Riek Machar, a former rival of Kiir’s, has been under house arrest since an attack on army bases in March. Additionally, several members of the SPLM-IO have fled into exile, fearing politically motivated arrests.
The exiled spokesperson, Pal Mai Deng, called Kiir’s appeal “paradoxical and insincere,” pointing to the continued arrests and military campaigns against opposition forces. He said that before urging dialogue, Kiir should stop military actions and the killing of Nuer civilians, whom he considers anti-government.
The CEPO civil society group has also warned that Machar’s detention has rendered the continuation of peace talks impractical. Edmund Yakani, the group’s Executive Director, stated that Machar’s absence from the government’s daily business has left the government of national unity “unbalanced.”
The current situation is viewed with alarm by the international community. The United Nations warned last month that the 2018 peace agreement, which ended a five-year civil war that claimed nearly 400,000 lives, is on the brink of collapse. The UN’s Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan described the situation as a “crisis,” with the agreement now at the “brink of irrelevance, threatening a total collapse.”
