The Land Issue isn’t the criteria for gubernatorial race in Eastern Lakes
6 min readA Response to Machiek Nhial‘s opinion article entitled: “Yirol Land should not be used as a scapegoat in the Gubernatorial Race for Eastern Lakes State.”
By Nelson Makoi, Kampala, Uganda
On the November 11, Machiek Nhial Makeny wrote an article published by the South Sudanese bloggers known as Paanluel Wel. When I took my little time at night to pass through his writing, I found something which was not true and that need correction in his opinions writing and given the fact that Mr. Machiek lives in Kenya and he is a bit far away from Juba where politics of the newly created 28 states are discussed.
However, I believed that Mr. Machiek got much of his information on phone from Juba or Facebook updates generally known as social media of which there is barrier in communication. In this regards, I would put it right to elaborate more to correct few things where Mr. Machiek Nhial was not right in his article and what he had written on the bloggers page was misleading, fabricated and misinformation to the people of Eastern Lakes State and entire South Sudanese in the Diaspora.
My brother Machiek, I wanted to bring into your attention and give you in side history on how the nomination of gubernatorial candidates came about from the date of the Yirol community meeting and as a result of that, you saw some of us posting photos of candidates on facebook. In the meeting of Greater Yirol, I was one of the five people selected to write minutes of the Greater Yirol Community meeting for the celebration of the creation of Eastern Lakes State held at Star Hotel in Juba on the 17th of October, 2015. I have the resolutions and minutes of the meeting and I can share with you if you don’t mind.
Indeed, I would begin to highlight few cases that I have observed in your article and should be corrected below:
- Machiek Nhial mentioned that Yirol Land should not be used as scapegoat for the gubernatorial position; indeed, to prove you wrong, there was no resolution that endorsed Yirol land as the basis and criteria for nominating the candidate for the first Governorship of Eastern Lakes State as you put it. This is not true in your article and you must revise it well. What was resolved and it was a call from all people of Eastern Lakes State was to identify a candidate who is going to unite people of Yirol, lay down strong foundation and establishment for the new state, develop strategic plan for development, and promote peace and harmony among community of Greater Yirol. In addition, the people of greater Yirol resolved that they need a candidate with quality leadership and that he/she should come from any county of Greater Yirol, well connected and person of high moral and integrity, quickly in decision making and response positively to the need of his people, respect rule of law and to maintain current peace and security for the people of Yirol that was the basis and criteria for identifying the candidate. Therefore, many people from three counties of Greater Yirol believed that Gen. Rin Tueny mabor was the right candidate to fill the post as he possessed some of the qualities set forth but there are many other candidates but Gen. Rin Tueny was given a chance to lay down foundation for the new state.
- Machiek Nhial put it again in his article that, Gen. Rin Tueny Mabor was nominated by Agok Manyiel and this was also not true. Gen. Rin Tueny was nominated by the people of Yirol West in the meeting held at Juba Grand Hotel on the 16th of October, 2015 before general meeting of Greater Yirol community. In the meeting of Greater Yirol community, each county was asked to present their position in regards to who should become the first governor of Eastern Lakes and who was the nominee herein;
[a] Agok Manyiel was asked to present the position of Yirol West County and he [Agok] just announced the nomination of Maj. Gen. Rin Tueny as the candidate from Yirol West to fill the position of the first Governorship of Eastern Lakes State.
[b] Hon. Gabriel Roric Jur was asked to present the position of Yirol East and the nominees from Yirol East for the Governorship were as follows:
- Mabor Achol Kuer
- Ayual Makoi
- Bor Philip
- Makuei Majok Kuong
[c] Awerial County nominated Aguto Kok and he later declined in favour of Gen. Rin Tueny.
- The other issue was, who is supposed to recommend candidates for the position of Governorship to the president for appointment, Machiek took it upon himself to recommend few individuals of his interest whom he thought would deem fit in the position of the first Governor of Eastern Lakes, this is not the right way to handle community issues where individual such as Machiek go on media and express his own views and instead share with community to know who are the nominees of greater Yirol and choose one candidate among them. The right body to nominate candidates of such position is the ruling party such as SPLM in consultation with concern community of which it happens in Eastern Lakes state where community recommended five [5] candidates to the SPLM Chairpersons of three counties of Greater Yirol and the SPLM counties leadership also recommended only two candidates to the SPLM state leadership Maj. Gen. Rin Tueny Mabor and Maj. Gen. Bor Philip of whom their names were already submitted to the appointing authority who is the president of the Republic.
The two candidates who were recommended by the SPLM state leadership were Gen. Rin Tueny Mabor as the first choice and follow by Gen. Bor Philip as the second choice and the two are sons of Yirol and whoever appointed will serve people of greater Yirol.
The list you published in your article is not the official list drawn by the SPLM in consultation with community of Greater Yirol and we should wait to the appointing authority to choose between the two candidates above:
The writer is the Speaker of South Sudanese Students Union in Uganda, graduate of Bachelor of Art in International Relations and Diplomacy from Cavendish University Uganda; he can be reached on email: nelsonturdit@yahoo.com
The opinion expressed here is solely the view of the writer. The veracity of any claim made are the responsibility of the author, not PaanLuel Wël: South Sudanese Bloggers (SSB) website. If you want to submit an opinion article or news analysis, please email it to paanluel2011@gmail.com. SSB do reserve the right to edit material before publication. Please include your full name, email address and the country you are writing from
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