By the way, when we hear so many people say that the SPLM has lost its vision and has veered off the road it was created to travel towards liberation and creation of New Sudan, what exactly was that vision to begin with? Where was it articulated and written? Apart from the eloquent lectures given by Dr Garang, all of which were aimed at galvanising support for the war, and in which he sporadically indicated what a liberated Sudan or South Sudan or the New Sudan, as it were, would need to do to achieve development and to serve its people, what in your view was this vision the SPLM under President Kiir supposedly diverted from? I ask because, in my view, the SPLM really never had a vision for a democratic South Sudan, no articulated development program as a liberation strategy, no theory of change, just an assumption that the popularity of the liberation meant that there would automatically be birth of a progressive developmental state that would just emerge out of victory and independence. As a matter of fact, did we not hear Dr John himself mock his critics, that there can be “no democracy during a liberation war, what democracy in the bush?” In other words, in the conception of Dr John, he himself and himself alone was the liberation movement and the liberation movement was him, he was not interested in putting down the foundations of an open society for the country he wanted to replace the country we didn’t want. He was not open to debating his liberation agenda and all his immediate aides only parodied his “vision.” He gave glowing and long lectures but there was no room for anyone to respond to his ideas, other than to applaud them. Any whiffs of disagreement were summarily dealt with, often with death. Even Salva Kiir could have faced it very rough in 2003-2004, if it had not been the weight of Bahr el Ghazal in the SPLA and the fear that the SPLA fighters from there would exit the SPLA if Kiir was touched. It was undoubtedly Garang’s attitude to dissenting opinions that exterminated Anyanya 2, lead to Kerubino, William Nyuon’s exit and their eventual death at the hands of the SPLA, not to say anything about Lam Akol Ajawin @~LAA and Riek Machar’s 1991 split. Without a written vision, a liberation philosophy, no discussion, and no tolerance for differing views, one hardly sees what the fuss is about with regards to a lost SPLM vision. In fact, what is there is the SPLM/A prideful battle successes, which is much applauded by South Sudanese. Other than this, anything that passes for a vision is nothing but autocracy and headless march to create a state/nation that has got no ideological bearings, no plan, no political tolerance. After the tragic demise of Dr John, what we inherited is not a “vision” but a mere insistence to rule on account of liberation credentials under Kiir Mayar, the chest beating that "we have liberated this country." Liberated it to what end? The consequences of this "we liberated it" include a non-tolerant, corrupt, economically dead clientele state, gripped by violence. A skeptic might ask, you liberated the country to do what with it, kill it the way you are doing now? Yes, liberation may have produce South Sudan, but it has not and will most likely produce no peace, no stability, perhaps only war on the scale of what is going on in Sudan currently, if South Sudan continues on this path!