Juba, South Sudan
March 4, 2022—The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-In-Opposition (SPLM-IO) has refuted President Salva Kiir’s remarks to AU that the party has promoted all its forces to senior ranks hindering the graduation of the necessary unified army.
On Friday, President Kiir reportedly told African Union (AU) during the meeting that unified forces have been trained and ready for the graduation but the opposition forces including SPLA-IO and SSOA promoted all their soldiers to officers exceeding the number of ordinary soldiers.
According to President Kiir, such exercise preclude the formation of a command structure and graduation of the forces.
Kiir’s statement to AU came barely a week after the presidency resolved to graduate the first batch of the unified forces after formation of the command structure.
But before the AU’s visit, the presidency had given the Joint Defense Board one week to verify more than 50, 000 screened joint forces before graduation.
However, Mr. Puok Both Baluang, the Acting Press Secretary in the office of the First Vice President challenged Kiir’s claims, saying SPLA-IO has not promoted its soldiers to higher ranks.
Baluang attributed the delay to graduation of the unified forces to the reluctance of SPLM-IG to demonstrate a political will for the full implementation of the Revitalized Peace Agreement.
He denied president’s claims that the main opposition group has more generals than soldiers and termed it as ” incorrect”.
“The President pointed out that the SPLM-IO has more generals, which is not true. And according to the reports of the JDB they have finished all the screening based on military formation starting from squad upward,” Baluang told reporters.
According to Baluang, the graduation of the unified forces is not relying on the arrangements of the screening of the forces only, he said first they should have agreed on the unified command of these forces; second, the parliament has to pass the security laws.
“These laws are the one that will regulate the work of these forces, so these are the two factors behind the delay, and lastly, lack of the political will from President Salva Kiir’s party.”, Baluang further stressed.
Last month, during the meeting of Presidency, attended by Sudan’s Deputy Sovereign Council Gen. Mohamad Hamdan Daglo “Hemmeti”, the signatories to the agreement agreed to advance the implementation of the Security Arrangements within a week.
