Machar: We all need prosperity but…

First Vice President Dr Riek Machar says South Sudan can be a prosperous nation if politicians shed their divisive tendencies and shift focus to development.

In a remark during the launch of the SPLM-IO first headquarters (Secretariat office) on Saturday in Juba, Machar said despite being one of the richest countries on the continent, South Sudan remained poor due to disunity that has led to protracted conflicts. 

“Others describe us as an oil country, but from the top to down, starting from the president to myself, everybody is complaining. Where did our money go? We complain, but we expected in the last ten years that we would change this country,” the opposition leader said. 

Dr Machar added that the country would reap the benefits of its unity but said due to the continued fighting, the country would likely remain poor as it is. 

He said since the country’s independence, it could not make use of its recourses to provide services to its people. 

“As a result, everyone is complaining, but if we remain united and peaceful, South Sudan will become a prosperous nation,” Dr Machar added.

However, he urged his party members to be united and prepare for the elections that will be conducted at the end of the pre-transitional period.

Dr Machar stressed the need for the country to talk about credible, peaceful, and fair elections.

He encouraged his party members and other parties to the peace agreement recommit their efforts to make sure that the major tasks in the peace agreement were implemented.

Machar highlighted what should be done before elections are conducted in the country.

He said the security arrangements, the permanent constitution, repatriations of refugees, IDPs are key for the elections to happen in the country.

Dr Machar reiterated that without implementing those key factors, the transition may not be completed, saying the end game which is needed to go for elections would not be done.

About his party, Machar told his members that the South People’s Liberation Movement/Army in Opposition (SPLM/A-IO) is a party that originated from the SPLM/A.

“Some people used to ask me, chairman, when are we going to change our party name from SPLM/A-IO? But I tell them that they know this is the name now, so we have to go with it. “

Dr Machar said the party has been established in Nasir, Upper Nile State, in 2014 following the outbreak of war in the country.

In 2019, while Machar was in Khartoum, where talks with the government on pre-transitional activities were ongoing, the SPLM-IO announced that it was moving its headquarters to Juba, but then remained without an office since.

According to a report published by World Bank in 2019, South Sudan faced formidable development challenges, with 51% of the population living in poverty.

The report said almost 4.5 million people had been forced from their homes, more than a third of the country’s population. Protracted insecurity and large-scale displacement have taken a huge toll on livelihoods, and private consumption has been consistently falling since the onset of the civil war. Against this backdrop of ongoing violence, the South Sudanese economy is experiencing a severe contraction, driven by falling oil revenues and conflict-related disruptions of economic production.

In the World Bank’s South Sudan High-Frequency Survey (HFS), in collaboration with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and with funding from the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID). Teams of trained enumerators have interviewed household heads in all accessible regions of the country since 2015. The poverty headcount jumped from 51% to 82% between 2009 and 2016, meaning that the vast majority of the population was living under the international poverty line of $1.90 (PPP 2011) per day in 2016.

This number includes a massive single-year jump of 16 percentage points from 2015 to 2016 due to the combined shocks of conflict and near hyperinflationary conditions. The poverty gap—the average deficit in consumption for poor households relative to the poverty line—doubled from 23% in 2009 to 47% in 2016.