By William Madouk Garang
Parties to the Revitalized Peace agreement have pressed their feet on pedal to wrap up the transition period as their inputs will now be added to the proposed roadmap document before its adoption.
The developed electoral roadmap was rolled out to the political parties on Saturday to scrutinize, add their input and come up with harmonized document before the Presidency utters final resolution.
The Minister of Cabinet Affairs, Dr. Martin Elia Lomuro said the proposed roadmap was a mathematical matrix that explains what tasks will be done and the period it will be done.
Addressing Journalists after the meeting, Dr. Lomuro said the meeting came after the Presidency had resolved that the roadmap document be shared with parties to the agreement to add their views.
“We decided that the parties to the agreement should have the whole of Friday to review the document and refer their inputs to make it easier and quicker for us now to be able to harmonize the views of the various parties,” Lomuro said.
“Today [Saturday] I am glad to report that we have received the views of the parties to the agreement based on the proposal of the President on how to end the agreement in peaceful and credible elections” he added.
Dr. Lomuro stated that the parties’ contributions were not severely different from what were originally in the document, adding that those views will be added to make one harmonized document.
“We are now going to incorporate those views and then tomorrow we will go through the harmonized document, and then present it to the meeting of the Presidency, hopefully also an extended meeting of the Presidency in which the final decision will be made” he explained.
While urging the public to wait for the final resolution from the Presidency after the views unification, Dr. Lomuro cited that as parties they are committed to peace implementation.
“… Article 8.4 to the agreement … empowered [parties] to make whatever amendment they feel necessary. In order to make sure that this country does not go back to war,
“I think that is the most important point, we don’t want our people to be in war again, we don’t want our people to suffer, we want the peace agreement to end in peaceful and credible elections,” he noted.
However, in mid-July, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in Opposition (SPLM-IO) said it was not party to the process of making the roadmap, hence the document remains an edifice of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-government (SPLM-IG).
The Acting press Secretary in the Office of Dr. Riek Machar, Puok Both Baluang, said his boss will only support the roadmap if it will address the pending issues in the agreement that would restore peace in the country.
This came after President Salva Kiir received a report on the peace deal rollout roadmap from a committee. The members of the committee included; Tut Gatluak Manime, Presidential advisor on Security Affairs.
Dr. Martin Elia Lomuro – the Minister of Cabinet Affairs, Mayiik Ayii Deng – the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and Michael Makuei – Minister of Information.
Dr. Lam Akol in a press release earlier argued that the proposed roadmap that was presented to the President lacked proper representation from all the parties such as South Sudan Opposition Alliance (SSOA), Other Opposition Parties (OPP) and former Detainees (FDs).
According to the National Democratic Movement (NDM), the process of coming up with the proposal ignored the crucial need to involve other peace guarantors and monitors such as R-JMEC.
Although milestones have been reached, there are some vital terms of the agreement still pending. This includes; permanent constitution yet to be approved by Parliament, the graduation of unified forces, the reorganization of the electoral commission, the electoral Act, census among others.
The UN representative in South Sudan has been urging all parties to the agreement to show the unity of purpose by working together to fully implement the agreement by taking necessary action to help the nation exit its transitional period by holding credible, free, and fair elections.