South Sudan's English Daily Newspaper
"We Dare where others fear"
Edmund Yakani, CEPO director.
By Simon Deng
The Executive Director for the Community Empowerment for Progress Organization (CEPO), Edmund Yakani has urged the government and the opposition groups to build confidence and trust in order to realize positive outcome in the ongoing Nairobi peace talks.
“The main problem to any agreement is political governance and security arrangements, what made the 2018 revitalized agreement to fail in five years is due to lack of trust and confidence among signatories ,” Yakani told The Dawn in an interview on Sunday in Juba.
Yakani revealed that the Nairobi agreement between the hold-out opposition groups and the government may not work, due to lack of trust and confidence among the political leaders, and also because of the failure to successfully implement the security arrangements by parties which signed the 2018 revitalized peace agreement.
He said that civil society groups are working to persuade both Thomas Cirilo Swaka of the National Salvation Front (NAS) and Emmanuel Ajawin of the National Democratic Movement to join the ongoing peace process in Kenya.
Yakani also noted that Simon Gatwech Dual, the leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement -in opposition (SPLM/A-IO)-Kitguang faction will arrive on Monday for the Nairobi talks.
“The failure to implement the agreement is linked to security arrangements and also people who rebel are rewarded positions within the government, that’s why so many militias have joined the army (SSPDF) and that has weakened the army,” he disclosed.
The Nairobi peac e talks were launched on May 3rd and are being attended by opposition groups such as the South Sudan United Front (SSUF) under Paul Malong Awan and the Real Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (Real-SPLM) led by Pagan Amum Okiech.
The National Salvation Front (NAS) led by Thomas Cirilo Swaka is not taking part in the talks citing lack of security guarantees and also not being invited.
