Interesting and surprising quotations from the documents coming out of Arusha: 1. The parties acknowledge a collective responsibility for the crisis in South Sudan that has taken a great toll on the lives and property of our people. 2. Rules of Engagement -Civility -Mutual Respect -Honesty and Frankness -Confidentiality -Listening to each other well and understanding the contexts properly -Respect the right of individuals to express themselves no matter what their points of view might be -Avoid acrimonious approaches and finger pointing -Avoid group defense and/or group attack -Avoid polemics -Have an agreed spokesman, whose role is to communicate what is agreed by the members -Unless otherwise agreed, all discussions will be confined within this Framework It is not often political documents offer me any kind of answers to real-life issues. But! I was reading Pagan Amum, talking about how Khartoum and Kampala are interfering in our politics, as though that were somehow to blame for our current crisis. And I was wishing. Instead of issuing individual opinions about who else is to blame (the US, the troika, the mediators etc), how I wish our collective leadership would just all say: We are responsible. We failed our people. And then I read the Arusha documents. ...acknowledge a collective responsibility for the crisis in South Sudan... is not precisely what I was wishing for, but it is a great deal closer to it than anything I have heard so far. Its a start. As for the rules of engagement, if we facebookers could all follow rules 1-3 and 5-9, the quality and temper of our debates here would instantly be much improved. I also note with relish that the documents appear to be free of the usual potentially-legally-significant typographic errors and misspellings. As an editor, this ability produce competently-drafted documents, in itself, gives me an unaccustomed confidence in the Arusha process and its facilitators. It is a long time since I truly felt reason and logic coming from our collective leadership and even longer since I have been moved or inspired by anything that comes out of a top-down negotiation I am stunned to find that I feel hope building, despite the nano-cynic running around in my head shouting, Tourettes style, things like: 1972!, Abyei, Agreements, Schmagreements, per diems?, yeah, right, more blah blah blah? and Behind You!!!
Posted on: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 13:52:36 +0000
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