Mystery surrounds the destiny of SPLM members in Northern Sudan
Confusion of SPLM\'s political and organisational scene in its northern sector, and of its northern descent leaders are clear with the approach of the date of the referendum. While experts consider likelier, according to the movement\'s leaders\' tendencies in the South, that the overwhelming majority of votes are in favour of secession, the fate of the movement\'s members in the North in the event of the secession of the South is completely unknown. In this regard, the advisor of SPLM\'s leader in South Kordofan State, Qamar Delman, pointed out the instructions of the Movement\'s Political Bureau meeting shortly before the South-South Dialogue Conference in Juba that the SPLM in the North is to keep the same name and visions and to work on overall reorganising and reconstruction.
In a press interview, SPLM\'s Deputy Secretary in the Northern Sector and its ex-candidate to the presidential elections, Yasir Said Arman, expressed the same opinion, stressing the ability of the Movement in the North to continue, indicating that it had around 4 million members, in addition to the northern sector retaining the largest composition of the People\'s Army (fighters of Blue Nile and Nubia Mountains and the other non-southern fighters) that he considered to outnumber the soldiers of the armed movements in Darfur. Arman denied what some views had considered an oncoming entering of the Movement\'s northern sector into a unified organisational framework with some parties of the North, more specifically Umma Party, Reform and Renewal Party led by Mubarak al-Mahdi, categorically confirming that organisational capacities of the Movement in the North provided it with the opportunity for the optimal continuity, especially that the number of its members is approaching 4 millions.
On the other side, a southern leader kept the door partially open for the northern leaders when he said, \"Options are open for the supporters and leaders of the Movement in the North in case secession occurs. They have the right to do what they want\". This statement has apparently shocked many leaders of the Movement, as it is more beneficial to agree on a common strategy with regard to the continuation of the northern sector.
In his latest book \"Shakes increasing and pegs decreasing\", the President\'s advisor and a Movement leader, Dr. Mansour Khalid, reprobated much talking of their status as northern leaders in the Movement. He went on, \"We have never heard of anybody talking about the southern members of the National Congress - the ruling party in the North - who are many, and about the southern members of the People\'s Congress, who are not few and some of them hold high posts in that party. The southern and northern members of the Movement, and those of the low ranks in the army have kept calling themselves the New Sudanese because they are citizens without borders, a term which not many people rejoice at, let alone to feel much happy and \'Say: Let wrath kill you\'.\" Mansour commented on what was said about the obscure destiny of the northern members of the Movement: \"We say to those new gloaters, they will stay under the tent of what remains of Sudan and they will never be plucked out till the tent is uprooted.\"
Mansour Khalid\'s firmness that he would remain under the tent of Sudan did not, however, answer the question of how to remain under it. Would it be with keeping the same visions, capacities and organisational structure or with institutional structures that have new content, format and purport? And with any of the party alliances format?
During his interview with Al-Sharq, Muhammad Yusuf Ahmad al-Mustafa, one of the Movement\'s leaders, sadly sighed for some SPLM southern leaders\' use of administrative methods to prevent convening the Liberation Council to discuss unity and secession issues and the organisational reality of the northern sector in the event of secession. He hinted, in a direction different from some northern leaders\' visions, at the northern Movement staying on its same approach of the period preceding recession, if it occurs, and this is due to the presence of the cause on its same first position taking along the civil war history and the injustices of the persecution and marginalising of some cultural and geographical groups to other ones. Muhammad Yusuf assured the necessity of restructuring the state first and the equitable redistribution of power and wealth at the national level, and the need to delineate and arrange the situations at the Party level by holding a caucus prior to the referendum to crystallise the positions of the Movement and delineate its future in the North of Sudan. He also noted that the talk about keeping a part of the Movement army in the North deified reality , and said, \"People\'s Army does not practically belong to SPLM because the Agreement states that Nubia Mountains natives must go beyond the 1956 borders in case they wish to keep their presence within the People\'s Army after secession. Constitutionally, SPLM does not have an army; it is a civilian political entity.\"
Thus, reassuring statements are coming from all sides, or most of them, however, the reality appears to be speaking a different language. One example is the confirmed reports about some northern movement leaders evacuating their families to the Ugandan capital, Kampala, awaiting to see the outcome of the next days with regard to the destiny of the Movement in the North.
