Meanwhile, Machar voiced his ambitions to challenge Kiir for SPLM leadership and to be the party's presidential candidate in the country's 2015 elections, as did Pagan Amum, another dismissed cabinet member also seen as a political rival of Kiir within the SPLM.
By the expiration of the six-year interim agreement, the choice had become clear for SPLM and the vast majority of South Sudanese: it was a referendum vote that would finally give the South the respect and attention it so sorely lacked.
In the middle, on the sandy floor, was a collection of guns, membership forms for the SPLM, photo albums, military epaulettes, SPLM constitutions, South Sudanese currency and even packets of condoms, perhaps particularly shocking in a relatively conservative Muslim society.
Of the entire sample, the NCP got 28% of eligible voters.The same poll pointed to a resounding victory for the SPLM in the south, where voting on the day was a much calmer affair.
The government plane was shot down on Wednesday afternoon, Arnu Ngutulu Lodi, a spokesman for the SPLM-North, told the AFP news agency.
Taban Deng Gai, spokesperson for the SPLM-IO, said that Kiir's government lost legitimacy on July 8 of this year when it held elections a year earlier than outlined by the constitution's five-year election period — elections Machar decried as "illegal" a day after they were held.
Unsurprisingly, the Sudanese leaders are determined by one means or another to remain in control.The SPLM, for its part, is focused on an entirely different election: the referendum on southern secession that was promised as part of the CPA.
Northern leaders have been doing this for decades, using rogue groups, such as the brutal Lord's Resistance Army that originated in neighbouring Uganda, as proxy militias to weaken the south and keep its SPLM off balance.The SPLM says the north is already up to its old tricks again.
After five years of SPLM rule, too many health and social indicators are slipping backwards.
It rekindled misgivings among Equatorians, many of whom feel they have been marginalised for decades by the SPLM, the liberation movement turned ruling party.
Mr Machar responded by indicating that he would challenge Mr Kiir for the leadership of the SPLM, and several other former government ministers sided with him.
