A group of South Sudanese civil society and politicians convened a one-day dialogue event on Tuesday calling for an immediate peace and warning the country's two warring parties that the government faces possible economic collapse and a loss of its legitimacy should it fail to bring peace.

Speaking on Tuesday during the event at Grand Hotel in Juba, Dr. Lam Akol, chairman of the SPLM Democratic Change party, said that stakeholders in the country need to take national action in order to bring peace, not leaving matters in the hands of the warring parties alone. He also questioned the legitimacy of a government chooses war over peace.

“Legitimacy that people talk about is the covenant between the people and their government; it is not something that you are assuming… when people are dying in tens of thousands, are you still legitimate?” Lam said.

“The government must get legitimacy from the people, so if the government fails to deliver services, fails to establish security, can it be business as usual? This is what we are telling them, no, the government cannot pretend that it is business as usual.”

Edmund Yakani, Executive Director of the Community Empowerment for Progress Organization (CEPO) said the purpose of the event was to bring civil society and politicians together to come up with a response to the deteriorating situation facing the population.

“The current situation of economic pressure on our people is taking us on a different trend, to a trend that a bag of a sugar in Aweil is 500 SSP, Juba now during daylight robbers are attempting with people... Look at the narrative that we are in today,” Yakani said.

He contended that it is best to end the violence, saying the two warring parties should place the interest of the citizens above their interest: “The two warring parties much observe permanent ceasefire; violence must stop because permanent ceasefire means a lot, its means farmers can go farm beside the economic pressure they have an alternative means of survival.”

Lam Akol slammed the ruling party SPLM saying it caused the current civil war and he blamed the SPLM politicians for power-seeking. He said the SPLM alone cannot bring peace to South Sudan.

“It is the South Sudanese who can tackle their problem, it is not to be done by the same group that failed to rule the country for ten years now to arrogate to itself the right to determine things on our behalf.”

For his part, David Dau, acting secretary-general for the Civil Society Alliance, urged the government and the rebels to work through the issues that they disagreed about so that they sign a peace agreement. Likewise, Yakani said that in the coming week they are going to organize dialogue with government officials to pressure them before the next round of peace talks starts.

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