Professor Adwok Nyaba. (-)

Veteran South Sudanese politician Adwok Nyaba appealed to political party leaders to dialogue and build consensus on the upcoming 2024 general elections.

Prof. Adwok Nyaba said lack of dialogue is one of the weaknesses among political leaders.

Speaking during a film review of the Anya-Nya armed resistant movement at the Norwegian Embassy in Juba, Prof Nyaba said the leaders should chatter a peaceful conduct of elections.

“One of the weaknesses of our leaders is that they are not dialoguing among themselves. You see, how will people come together if they are not talking, if they are not dialoguing when we know there is a problem?” Dr. Nyaba said.

“When there is a problem, people should sit down and talk, and who will do this, these are political leaders of political parties.”

Dr. Nyaba said the lack of positive communication is a challenge to the leaders.

He said dialogue and understanding are necessitated by the fact that the political leaders are in one government.

“And what we are seeing now, is a government pulling us toward elections, and we are not talking about how this election can be done freely, fairly, and credible.”

“People need to talk about it, we don’t want this country to go back to war, we want peace, war started in 1955 when I just gone to school, we can’t die in war.”

For his part, the Minister of Peacebuilding, Stephen Par echoed Prof. Adwok’s call for dialogue and consensus.

He pointed out that the only way to establish a cohesive national identity as South Sudanese is to embrace a culture of political consensus.

“The challenge we are facing now is to establish a cohesive national identity as South Sudanese because we were more united when we were southern Sudanese. Today, we are not who we used to say we are as a nation.”

“Unfortunately, we come from, the SPLM/SPLA, and we don’t have a culture of dialogue, it has always been monologuing, and in the monologue, only one person talks.”

“The rest are a captive audience of the person who monologues to other, and this is a challenge because you can’t make peace in a silence. You can’t build peace in a culture of a silent, people must talk.”