H.E GEN. SALVA KIIR MAYARDIT: THE BUCK WILL ALWAYS STOP AT HIM!
10 min readBy Peter Ngor Atem, Nairobi, Kenya
April 8, 2015 (SSB) —- First and foremost ,it would be unfair for any citizen of the Republic of South Sudan not to congratulate Mr. President on the new life breathed into him by the South Sudan Legislative Assembly.
It is a favor in rarity to get a three-year extension of his presidential term in office considering the fact that he humbly requested
for a two-year elongation
The additional one year added as a bonus speaks volumes. It shows beyond any iota of doubt that the MPs love,trust and more enticingly revere him.
In his name,they read salvation in lieu of Salva. That when they see him,they see a bright future of South Sudan. They hope that he will potentially make a U-TURN in as far as setting the country on its rightful path is concerned.
The entire citizenry is induced by MPs’ unilateral action to believe that all is not lost in his leadership and its fringe.
Without much ado,congratulations Your Excellency Salvatore Kiir Mayardit!
For starters, this maxim ‘the buck stops here’ traces its Genesis to the 33rd President of the US, H.E Harry S. Truman. During his reign, he put the wooden sign on the oval table in his office in order to remind himself about his responsibility. This was more of living the meaning of the maxim than a mere sloganeering.
He would refer to this desk sign in public statements in more occasions than one. It became his driving force in his tenure in the Office of the President.
In a simple tongue, he meant that he didn’t pass the buck to anyone else but accepted personal responsibility for the way the country was governed. This maxim qualified to be a political philosophy which is universally applicable as far as taking responsibility by the highest office occupier of any country is concerned. That when something goes wrong,blaming others is not a very leaderly look.
To crystallize on the above elucidation,President Salva Kiir is no exception if the application of the above stated maxim is anything to go by. Theoretically,the Draft Transitional Constitution of South Sudan genuinely vests in the people of South Sudan the executive, judicial and legislative powers . Practically, these powers are exercisable by the country’s CEO. He is the alpha and omega. He is dismally checked as expressly provided for in the Supreme Law of the Land.
He is only bound by his well-meant intuitions,Fear of God, and maybe Codes of Conduct in the Office of the President ; though subsidiary to the Supreme Law of the Land. He is in the letter and the spirit of the constitution co-equal with the same Constitution .
In short, I hold the view that the Constitution is silent on the procedural impeachment of the president in the event of arbitrariness: abuse of power, gross misconduct and massive violations of the same Constitution.
President Julius Nyerere justifiably put it that he was an imperialist president made so by the then Constitution of Tanzania. And so the Constitution of South Sudan has made Mr. President a sovereign though ,in theory, sovereignty belongs to the people of South Sudan.
Thanks to Justice John Luk Joak-led defunct Commission which unilaterally drafted, enacted and promulgated our Draft Transitional Constitution! Just as Hon.Alfred Keter, an MP in Kenya, would put it,Our president is at liberty to exercise his sheer audacity to ‘make law ,unmake or break the same’.
That means when he involuntarily coughs ,it is at his discretion to arbitrarily cough them out. It is legal ,constitutional and procedural to hire or fire any soul in his government if he deems it fit and also if it is not in breach of the Constitution and other written laws.
Mr.President is constitutionally tasked with a noble responsibility of appointing men and women of high integrity to independently superintend the other two arms of government:Speaker of SSLA , CJ of the Judiciary.
He also has a constitutional mandate to make many public appointments which include but not limited to ministers, ambassadors, heads of parastatals, chairpersons of constitutional commissions . In regard to the above constitutionally endowed duties ,he shoulders more than 99.9% of blameworthiness in South Sudan in the event of malfunctions.
Dear readers, it is a presidential privilege in any country to take credit or discredit accrued from any state officer under their watch. Or from their own office.
To draw parallels to that, when the US Intelligence agents coldly liquidated Osama Bin Laden; the man who threatened the very existence of humanity on the face of the Earth; it is president Obama who duly took the credit. He was radiantly smiling his way to any country on the globe. His shoulder was high. And he is up to today being submerged into a sea of praises by many.
In the same vein, when an ill-mannered gang conducted a sadistic attack on a Primary School in Connecticut and killed several school-children, the same President took the security lapse on his neck. He wholeheartedly apologized to the families of the lost little ones and the nation as a whole . More so, it was visible on the face how awfully his conscience was pricked!
Similarly, President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya painstakingly apologized to Kenyan people last week for the injustices that were meted out on them by the successive governments and indeed his government. It was widely viewed as a bold move owing to the fact that it is uncommon for African leaders to wake up one day and apologize because of the atrocities committed by them and others.
Why don’t you borrow a leaf from these two Presidents,Mr. President? It is not illegal to copy and paste the good principles of governance,is it?
Dear readers,in order to appreciate and understand why the buck will always stop at H.E Kiirdit Mayardit,let me go microscopic by compartmentalizing his government into three arms: Judiciary,Executive and Legislature. And its ills and inadequacies put on the spotlight.
Just to tip the iceberg, the pivotal duties of all judiciaries are to adjudicate, apply, create and defend the laws of the land. However,our judiciary is a deranged underdog which doesn’t fathom its mandate. Save for its procedural and legal exoneration of G-11 of all charges bordered on Treason following the alleged Coup Attempt,it has nothing else to show so as to win our confidence since its inception.
Such accountability bodies as Judicial Service Commission is not properly up and running. On the other hand,the Bar Association has not set the bar high for the legal practitioners . In that sense, justice is only done in South Sudan but it cannot be seen to be done.
In a nutshell,Judiciary has been overbearingly sandwiched by Legislature and Executive. Again,it is riddled with laxity, ineptitude, malpractices and political interference. Even its fundamental duty of keeping check and balances on other arms of government is equally taking a nose-dive. Again,Mr President bears the highest degree of responsibility taking into account his mandate to shaken up the judicial system and inject fresh blood in it. What father cannot take charge of the misdeeds and misconduct of their kids?
Executive ,the operative machinery of the government, is no exception. Save for few well meaning ministers, many ministers form their mini governments where they are at liberty to issue their decrees. They fire those who don’t speak the language of the system: working half day and toe the footprints of the seniors. Innovative approach to things is tantamount to insubordination.
Those vacant positions are peopled with people who are conjoined by proximity of blood with the policy-makers. Full-time workers are viewed enemies of the people.
Eti, they work with intent to outshine their seniors in terms of performance and net productivity. The systemic administrative malpractices here are innumerable.
An appointing authority Mr. President is, his disavowal of the responsibility is a bad joke!
The Hon. Magok Rundial-led Parliament,the longest arm of the government ,is not left out. For instance,the speaker would go for International Inter-parliamentary Conferences and the only observation he would make when he jets back to South Sudan is the beauty of the Parliament Chambers he attended.
Literally, the beautification done in the chambers and offices . And how well the lawn is mowed within the precincts of Parliament buildings. Is this Honorable, Hon.Speaker?
I suppose someone is not doing the work worth petrodollars he earns in salaries and allowances.
The MPs would take recesses which are unparliamentary. Little do they know that recuperation is imperative after a substantive work is done. And the question begs: do our MPs lack meaningful business to transact ? The answer is a big NO. There is lack of political goodwill to do what touches the hearts of the masses.
They avoid to discuss serious Bills which touch the heart of a 90-year old Jieng lady in Panyagor. Parliamentary deliberations are left with few MPs while the majority are deeply taking nap in their reclining chairs. In this case, Mr. President is supposed to blow the whistle to the hearing of their respective constituents who parachuted them to those sumptuous easy chairs.
At wholesale, the occupants of the three arms must be tailor-made by H.E Kiirdit to know that our country doesn’t require BUTCHERS to CUT and EAT it. Instead, it direly needs SURGEONS to CUT,with utmost precision, and STITCH it UP. They must declare their readiness to be surgeons now and forever, or else they face political extinction!
Dear readers,as fully schooled as this writer, many media outlets are gagged . Few others are facing censure. Typical example is a UN-sponsored Miraya FM. In this light,the journalists must be assured that H.E Salva Kiirdit is a public figure who is open to public opinion, debates and varied analyses. Many journalists are at crossroads because they do not know where their mandate starts and ends.
Whatever they were trained seems to be impracticable in South Sudan. They never enjoy that right in Junub Sudan, just as Sudan and Egypt ,whose democratic principles are not as profoundly enshrined in their Constitutions as opposed to our constitution.
Equally, their noblest work of informing people and sharping public opinions is practical on a paper, but glaringly impractical in their journalistic practice. Their work is plagued with disappearances, surmonses by National Security agents, death threats,tortures among other forms of threat.
They are clearly awaken to unimaginable consciousness due to this insecurity directed at them. The presidency is duty-bound to hardly press the Ministry of Information to operationalize the media laws . Again,this responsibility boils down (up?) to the highest office in the land
Ladies and gentlemen,you and I, in our small capacities, have a constitutional right to say anything as long as it is confined within the Institution of Presidency. Or any other state office in question.
Surpassingly, Civil Society is more unhindered than other individual or juristic persons to objectively put the government on its toes. The body is conventionally declared a constant barking dog. It is the only body which has the cardinal duty to point out the king’s nakedness if he is.
Conversely, this duty has been taken away from them in South Sudan. The members are more often than not subjugated to submission. At worst, they always decry sustained threats contrived to cease their lives from people they cannot tell.
Dear readers,since H.E Kiir Mayardit is entrusted with safeguarding lives and property of all citizens of South Sudan in disregard of any forms of standing, he has to take the responsibility!
As I underline, President Truman, in concretizing this concept in issue, asserted, “The President whoever he is has to decide . He cannot pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That is his job”.
Take control of the situation and disentangle our oil-rich South Sudan from its political abyss, Mr. President! This disentanglement is only possible if and when you sideline your advisors and rigorously filter out the truth from the ordinary citizens’ noises,cries and despondence.
The writer, Peter Ngor Atem, is a South Sudanese student of Law at the University of Nairobi, Kenya. He can be reached at ngorpeters@gmail.com
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