The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement acting Secretary-General, Peter Lam Both, arrived in the Western Bahr el Ghazal State capital Wau on Monday to reorganize the party’s structures for elections.
During an exclusive interview with Radio Tamazuj Tuesday, Both said he was in Wau with a party team to focus on reorganizing the party structures from the Boma, Payam, and County levels in preparation for the general elections scheduled in the peace agreement at the end of the transitional period.
“I came to the city of Wau yesterday (Monday) from Juba. This is the first leg of our state missions to reorganize SPLM in all the 10 states and the 3 administrative areas in South Sudan,” Both said. “I come here to reorganize the party from Boma, Payam, and County levels to get active again to organize themselves in preparation for the upcoming elections.”
“We have six agenda items that we are doing right now as SPLM national secretariat and one of them is the reorganization of the party which we are aiming to complete before the end of May and after which we will have a comprehensive report for the National Liberation Council,” he added.
The SPLM official said his party is also considering the reinstatement of officials who were elected to party positions in 2008 but might have left for one reason or another.
“We want to return whoever was elected in 2008 back to the office. If for any reason somebody has died or rebelled and joined another party, then the same constituency will be requested to bring a person to fill that position that will happen at Boma, Payam, County, and State levels,” he said.
Both said they are ready for the elections.
“For SPLM, we are organizing ourselves in anticipation of the upcoming elections next year and that is one of the reasons why we are here to organize the party from grassroots levels and other preparations are underway,” he added.
He called on other political parties in the country to get ready for the elections.
“We encourage the rest of the other political parties that are signatory to the peace agreement that they should now work to register themselves and to organize their parties so that we have a healthy political competition next year when the time for elections comes,” Both said.