August 30th 2019 (Nyamilepedia) – South Sudan’s former SPLA chief of staff General Oyai Deng Ajak has said members of the SPLM-Former Detainees (FDs) did not agree to have one political objective during the onset of the ongoing conflict in 2013.
General Ajak who was speaking to Nyamilepedia last week said they were forced to become a group following their detention in December 2013 by the government of President Salva Kiir who believed that the senior SPLM-IO officials tried to oust him from power.
“When we were arrested, we found ourselves under arrest in a circumstance we were not clear of and so we were forced into something called ‘SPLM Former Political Detainees’ and we accidentally found ourselves as one group without a political objective,” Ajak said.
“However, within this group, there was no coherent agreement among ourselves as to what objective and what program we were pursuing as a group,” Ajak added.
General Ajak further said because they knew they were part of the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), they didn’t sit down to draw a separate objective because they were sure they would once return.
“Because we understood that we are [leaders of the] SPLM, we didn’t draw what political program and what political direction to be followed,” Ajak said.
