Meeting of Southern Sudan Political Parties’ Leadership Council

A meeting of the Southern Sudan Political Parties’ Leadership Council, attended by USSP’s Leader, Mr Clement Mbugoniwia, was successfully convened on 16th November 2010 in the capital Juba.

Among the issues discussed were the adoption of the recommendations and resolutions of the South-South Dialogue and a review of the matrix that was generated by the Secretariat for the leadership meeting. The meeting unanimously passed the resolutions of the South-South Dialogue and also confirmed the communiqué of the said meeting to be the guiding principle for the way forward. The leaders re-affirmed their commitment to work continuously for reconciliation and the unity of the people of South Sudan. Furthermore, the meeting also agreed that the Referendum is the responsibility of all and, as such, no one political party should assume that the exercise belongs to it alone at the exclusion of others. All committees must include other Southern political parties and they must work together for a free, fair, transparent and peaceful Referendum process. This meeting was also attended briefly by the former President of Tanzania, H.E. Benjamin Mkapa, who is the head of UN observers in Sudan. Mr Mkapa addressed the leaders and called for their unity and respect for the rules in order to maintain credibility of the result. He stated that the process of registration in Juba was very good and encouraging.

Mr Mbugoniwia raised the issue of alleged irregularities in the IOM-administered registration exercise in the UK. [IOM is the International Organization for Migration.] News of irregularities was of great concern to the political leaders, but no concrete resolutions came up because there are also reports of similar issues in the other seven countries, in addition to northern Sudan. However, it was unanimously agreed that South Sudanese overseas should not register so that, should the registration process come up with a list that does not necessarily include South Sudanese, a flawed registration exercise and result will have clearly been shown!