Opinion by: Gattiek Gatkuoth Wichar
The dissolution of the long time defacto transitional national legislative assembly and council of the state is a positive step ever done towards achieving genuine and sustainable peace in South Sudan, however, the Parliament should have already been dissolved since 2019 if signatories to the peace agreement are very serious to implementing peace in text and spirit.
It has been a year, one month and 19 days since the formation of the executives of the Revitalized Transitional government of the National Unity (R-TGoNU) of the Republic of South Sudan, however, the intransigency of the peace partners and other stakeholders to the revitalized peace agreement frustrated all efforts to implement the agreement in due time since there is no political will among them to expedite the implementation process.
The implementation process stuck only in chapter one since the formation of the Transitional cabinets, when in fact the agreement has more than seven chapters. It is crystal clear now that the delay in the peace implementation process is a stratagem of the predatory elite within the former TGoNU government to seek an extension of the Revitalized Transitional Government of National Unity so that they continue maintaining the status quo as usual.
The civil population has been suffering for more than seven consecutive years both internal and external displaced persons despite the fact that they are the very people to whom this peace was signed on their behalf and yet their conditions have never been put into consideration.
The political behaviors of the leaders towards citizens of South Sudan after the signing of the Khartoum revitalized peace agreement in 2018 (KPA) are too arrogant and provocative, many citizens often argued that the deal was literally meant for distributions of wealth and portfolios among political classes rather for ending the untold sufferings of the people of South Sudan since the politicians are just wrangling on daily basis on who should take this cake instead of reaching mutual and peaceful consensus on all matters for the prime interest of their citizens and country.
South Sudanese have never enjoyed peace dividends since 2005 up to date, in South Sudan there are only a few corrupt individuals who owned property, living a luxurious life at the expense of common citizens where the rest of citizens in the other hand who are approximately constituted 80% of the population lives in imaginable destitution and to make it worse such classification at wealth and power-sharing is being exercised shamelessly by the same SPLM ruling party that fought against such discriminative policies for many decades against Khartoum theocratic regime in order for South Sudanese to achieve their real freedom, peace, and equality at last.
South Sudanese leaders need to rethink the future of their country and citizens instead of thinking for themselves all the times for more than 15 years since the signing of the comprehensive peace agreement (CPA) in 2005 otherwise the struggles of South Sudanese which cost them more than sixty years in the jungle will be meaningless sacrifices.