S. Sudan’s sacked VP Machar calls for calm

JUBA: Riek Machar, the vice-president of South Sudan until he was sacked earlier this week by his boss and political rival President Salva Kiir, on Friday appealed for calm in the tense nation.
Kiir on Tuesday fired all 28 Cabinet ministers and their deputies as he announced that his next government would consist of only 19 ministries.
Machar is seen as a major rival who has made no secret of his plans to challenge the president for leadership of the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in 2015.
“I want to call on the citizens to remain calm,” Machar told journalists gathered at his home in Juba in his first public remarks since his removal from office.
“This is a constitutional mandate of the president to remove and form a government. This is within the powers of the president. There should be no violence,” he went on.
“The army should not be involved in politics in any way. They should respect the constitution,” said Machar.
Machar, of the Dok Nuer people from South Sudan’s key oil producing Unity state, is a controversial figure but commands loyalty among many branches of the Nuer, who are part of the footsoldiers of the new nation’s ex-rebel army.
He has made clear his political ambitions in two years time. “I have told my colleagues in the party comes 2015 I will contest” for president within the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), he reiterated in Friday.
Many of the sacked ministers were key figures in the rebel SPLM or its armed wing that fought a brutal 1983-2005 war against the government of Sudan, which led to a 2011 referendum in which South Sudan voted overwhelmingly to split from the north and form a new nation.
However, Machar fought on both sides of the civil war, leading a splinter SPLM faction that sided with the Sudanese government in Khartoum, battling troops commanded by Kiir, who comes from the Dinka people.
Machar’s troops were accused of a brutal massacre in the ethnic Dinka town of Bor in 1991.


Last month, Machar led talks with Sudan’s President Omar Al-Bashir to ease tensions after his government threatened to halt South Sudanese oil flows transported through Sudan, worth billions of dollars to the two impoverished neighbors.





Kiir has been in consultations since Thursday with a view to appointing a new cabinet, according to government officials.