South Sudan’s war leaders Salva Kiir and Riek Machar during a meeting yesterday agreed to cut out the SPLM-G10 faction from political talks in Addis Ababa, according to a negotiator.
The SPLM-G10 faction – also called the ‘Former Detainees’ or ‘SPLM Leaders’ – are a group of ten exiled politicians including several former cabinet ministers. They were associated with Riek Machar prior to December 2013 but split with him thereafter, choosing not to endorse the use of war to overthrow Kiir.
Pagan Amum, former SPLM secretary-general and one of the SPLM-G10, told Radio Tamazuj today that Machar and Kiir agreed in their first face-to-face meeting of the round to stop the SPLM-G10 from continuing to participate.
He said that they were informed of this development by the mediation. He said they were not given any explanation for this.
It is not yet clear what this means for the draft deal under discussion: A previous version of the draft peace agreement prepared by the IGAD mediation had given the SPLM-G10 and other parties a 10% share of the cabinet posts and a few seats in the national parliament.
SPLM-Juba led by Salva Kiir and SPLM-IO led by Riek Machar together would have taken 90% of the cabinet seats and 90% of the parliament, according to the proposal prepared by the mediators and released to the press as a ‘working document’ on 2 February.
They did not agree on exactly what share each side would take, though the mediators proposed 60% to Kiir’s group and 30% to Machar’s.
In the working document, signed by Salva Kiir, the SPLM-Juba led government explicitly accepted that the SPLM-G10 and other parties would be given a 10% share of the ministerial portfolios.
If the SPLM-G10 were to be cut out from the agreement, it would represent a reversal of this commitment and would signal the intention of the two war leaders to allocate 100% of the post-war cabinet and parliament posts to their loyalists.
However, on the key leadership issues including the powers and position to be given to Riek Machar – a matter that has hindered the talks repeatedly – there are no breakthroughs reported.