Dr Machar accuses critics of attempting to scuttle the peace deal

First Vice President Dr Riek Machar has accused his critics of staging an onslaught on the 2018 peace agreement by trying to create divisions in the country’s main armed opposition group.

Just immediately after a splinter faction, comprising three former military generals with the South Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army-IO (SPLM/A-IO), denounced his leadership, Dr Machar convened a party’s Political Bureau meeting to clear the air on Wednesday.

As per a news report by Reuters, Dr Machar said in a statement that, “the declaration was engineered and facilitated by peace spoilers.”

According to Dr Machar, his former allies are trying to create fissures in the party’s army and this could have a negative bearing on the planned graduation of forces.

He accused them of trying to sabotage the process by preventing the troops from being integrated into the national military command, as required by chapter two of the 2018 peace agreement.

‘Attempted coup’

His response came after former Chief of General Staff, Simon Gatwech Dual, former Sector 1 commander, Gen. Johnson Olony Thubo, and former sector 3 commander, Thomas Dhoal, met in Magenis, Upper Nile, and resolved in a declaration that Dr Machar was no longer acting in the interest of the party and had been toppled from the leadership.

The group installed Gen. Dual as the interim SPLM/A-IO chairperson and accorded him the title of the first vice president of the country.

South Sudan plunged into civil war in 2013 leading to the deaths of over 400,000 people. In 2018, Dr Machar and President Salva Kiir Mayardit bridged the differences and struck a power-sharing deal with gave rise to the formation of the Revitalised Transitional Government of National Unity (RTGoNU).