The faction of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) loyal to South Sudanese President Salva Kiir announced after a lengthy leadership meeting yesterday that it would hold a party convention within one month.

Speaking on Friday evening to the press, Martin Majut Yak, SPLM Secretary for Popular and Syndicated Organizations, said that the SPLM National Liberation Council (Juba faction) had met “to discuss the reorganization of the SPLM party” and resolved to have an extraordinary convention within one month.

The National Convention is nominally the highest organ of SPLM, but it has met only twice since the movement’s founding more than 30 years ago. The party’s 2008 constitution describes the Convention as “the highest organ of the Party as established under this Constitution” and “the supreme political organ of the Movement.”

As such, the holding of a Convention is considered by party members as symbolically very important, and it was debates over the organization of the Convention in 2013 that in large part led to increased tensions ahead of the December 2013 crisis that sparked the current civil war.

Kiir's party is one of several main groups bearing the name 'SPLM', including the SPLM-in-Opposition led by Riek Machar, SPLM Former Detainees led by Pagan Amum (also known as G10), SPLM-Democratic Change led by Lam Akol, and SPLM-North led by Malik Aggar.

The main southern SPLM factions – Kiir's, Riek's and Pagan's – all signed the IGAD peace agreement in August 2015 agreeing to enter a unity government together at the beginning of a 'transitional period' that should start in late November this year.

By this timing, the convention announced yesterday would happen before the formation of the unity government and likely therefore without the participation of the SPLM-FD and SPLM-IO.

According to Martin Majut Yak, who was speaking yesterday in the capacity of caretaker in the party, the National Liberation Council chaired by Kiir yesterday also decided to remove all of the members of the general secretariat from their positions. This would include the secretary-general Pagan Amum, whom Kiir reinstated last June during a brief rapprochement between the two leaders.

The meeting empowered Kiir to appoint new secretariat members. “The National Liberation Council has resolved to dissolve the general secretariat and the chairman is empowered to appoint new secretaries in the new secretariat,” said Yak.

It will be recalled that President Salva Kiir, acting as SPLM chairman, made a similar announcement in November 2013, shortly before the start of the current civil war. At that stage he announced that all of the party organs had lost their legitimacy and were dissolved with the exception of his own post, saying, “Only office of the chairman is the only one that cannot be dissolved – nobody can dissolve it – and now I have all the powers to set up committees to start reorganization from the grassroots.”

He was referring to committees that would then appoint delegates to the National Convention, the party organ where the chairman of the party is elected or reelected.

Yesterday's meeting also issued a number of other resolutions, including endorsing Kiir's Establishment Order for the creation of 28 states and calling on the SPLM-IO faction to sign the minutes of the ceasefire workshop held recently in Addis Ababa.

The meeting was held at State House in Juba from about 10:00 a.m. until 7:30 p.m.