Signed “action plan” on CPA significant but not enough

After Wednesday’s signing of an “action plan” by partners aimed at ensuring that key elements of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement were fully implemented, BBC’s Network Africa talked with USSP Deputy Leader, Brian Badi, in their London studios, asking him if he thought this action plan was a significant step forward for the CPA.

Mr Badi: “I think it is. It’s a big step because it puts a new impetus into the process. The Sudanese do need some kind of encouragement and I think this encourages them both—the North and the South. And not only that, but from our experience, Khartoum works better under pressure. And if there’s no pressure, they will actually not even implement these things.”

BBC: “So you feel reassured that through the action plan the elements of the CPA will be implemented.”

Mr Badi: “Well, that is not enough, but that is just the beginning. And I think that I would really call upon the international community to keep [up] this pressure. This is step one. Step two is that they must make sure that the people on the ground are able to function, to work well, especially when it comes to the time of elections. They must make sure that there is security for ... the politicians and all the parties that would like to talk freely in elections. Otherwise it’ll just be a farce.”

BBC: “You mention the elections, [and] there’s also the issue of the referendum. Of all the elements in the CPA, are there some that you think won’t be implemented?”

Mr Badi: “Well, the question of the North-South border has not been concluded yet, because we must know where the border of South Sudan is... and then that will help us towards the elections. First of all, you know that the question of census was disputed between the SPLM and the NCP. The South is saying that the eight million [population of South Sudan] is not true, in fact the census were not carried out correctly, so there’s a disagreement over that. Although very recently, the leader of the South Sudan Government was saying well they would maybe accept this. But as far as I’m concerned, if the South is to go [independent], whether there are eight million of us they want to say, or whether there are more than that, all of them saying ... if fifty percent of them say they want their South, they should go.”

BBC: “So a national plan has been signed. What would you like to see now in order to ensure peace in Sudan?”

Mr Badi: “One is security of all the people—of all the people in the South. Just last week one MP, one leader of the NCP in Yambio was assassinated in her own house, a single mum. Now how did that come [about]? It needs to be investigated. And if this is, as most Southerners seem to think that it might be a political assassination, then we wouldn’t want such things to happen during the elections, otherwise the elections will not be fair. And so we would want ... really we are asking the international community, not just the action plan today and they turn their backs and go away, we want them to be standing by, all the time, because otherwise without them things would not go very well.”

Here’s an audio clip from the BBC Network Africa Web site

[© BBC—accessed 2009-08-20]