Tribocracy: The New Political Philosophy for the New Country (Part 2)
The Flag of the Republic of South Sudan
For the Republic of South Sudan to avoid the pitfalls of her fellow African countries and be politically and socio-economically successful, she must fully embrace and constitutionally legalize tribalism as a system of political representation in the constitution of government at the local, state, and regional levels, and especially in the national governments based in Juba.
By PaanLuel Wel, Washington DC, USA
Of these, 170 are the old 2010 elected members; 96 members are the political refugees displaced from the Government of National Unity in Khartoum, in April 2011, in the wake of South Sudan’s successful secession; 50 members are the South Sudanese members of the Council of States from Khartoum; and the remaining 66 members are the Banydit Kiir political cronies, who, I suppose, had to be politically accommodated to deny the devil the opportunity to use them to destabilize the country. It appears Benydit Kiir and Kuormedit Machar are rationalizing that their government, hence their coveted positions, would be politically secured if only they could take care of these small fish. And what better way to make an ally, even for a day, out of a potential political rival than to bring him/her to your side where he/she could indulge in the warmth of the wealth-generating fire around Banydit?
That as it may be, there is one burning question that South Sudanese are dying to know: is the newly-decreed South Sudan Legislative Assembly constituted tribocratically? That is to say, is it a regionally-balanced political appointment and a tribally fair and transparent political representation according to the respective population sizes of those parameters? Whether the finding to that query is in the affirmative or not, would, indubitably, be a harbinger of the composition of the looming cabinet.
In this second part of “Tribocracy: The New Political Philosophy for the New Country,” I am going to tribocratically dissect and analyze the just announced South Sudan Legislative Assembly at the regional level. Secondly, I am going to propose the regional composition, based on the principle of tribocracy, of the yet-to-be-revealed Cabinet of the Republic of South Sudan. I have widely and exhaustively discussed the meaning and the indispensableness of tribocracy as the new proposed political philosophy of governance in the new Republic of South Sudan in part one of “Tribocracy: The New Political Philosophy for the New Country.”
It, therefore, suffices here to briefly state that tribalism is “a form of government where representatives of a particular ethnic group hold a number of government posts disproportionately large to the percentage of the total population that the particular ethnic group(s) represents and use them to advance the position of their particular ethnic group(s) to the detriment of others.” Tribocracy, the opposite twin sister and her true panacea, on the other hand, is a political system, to paraphrase the same quote, where representatives of a particular ethnic group hold a number of government posts proportionate to the percentage of the total population that the particular ethnic group(s) represents in order to promote and achieve fair and equitable political representation across all ethnic groups that comprise and form that particular nation.
Tribocracy at the Regional Level
According to the record of the South Sudan Census Commissioner, Hon. Isaiah Chol Aruai, the current population of the Republic of South Sudan, based on the May 2009 Sudan fifth population and housing census, stands at approximately 8.26 million. At the state level, Jonglei state has about 1.36 million; Central Equatoria state has about 1.10 million; Warrap state about 0.97 million; Upper Nile about 0.96 million; Eastern Equatoria state about 0.91 million; Northern Bahr el Ghazal about 0.72 million; Lakes state about 0.695 million; Western Equatoria state about 0.62 million; Unity state about 0.585 million; and Western Bahr el Ghazal with about 0.33 million.
Regionally speaking, therefore, the Greater Upper Nile region—comprising the three states of Jonglei, Unity, and Upper Nile—would have about 2.91 million people. The Greater Bahr el Ghazal region, which is made up of four states of Warrap, Lakes, Northern Bahr el Ghazal, and Western Bahr el Ghazal, would have around 2.72 million people. Finally, the Greater Equatoria region, composed of three states of Central Equatoria, Eastern Equatoria, and Western Equatoria, would gain about 2.63 million inhabitants.
Thus, of the total population of 8.26 million citizens of the Republic of South Sudan, 35% of them reside in the Greater Upper Nile region, 33% in the Greater Bahr el Ghazal region, and 32% live in the Greater Equatoria region. Tribocratically speaking, that means that in terms of equitable and fair political representation in the national government in Juba, the Greater Upper Nile region should get a 35% share of the seats in Juba, and the Greater Bahr el Ghazal should take home a 33% share of the seats, while the Greater Equatoria region should pocket the remaining percentage of 32%.
That political arrangement would, of course, be applicable to, and implementable at, both the composition of the South Sudan National Assembly as well as the forthcoming cabinet appointment. Tell me, which region would have the audacity to complain of political marginalization; discriminative under-representation; disproportionate underdevelopment; political neglect; and/or tribalism in political appointments were that to be the legal political framework under which President Salva Kiir’s decrees and political appointments are informed and based on?
Now let’s go back to the burning question we just broached at the beginning of this article that South Sudanese can’t wait to find out: is the current SSLA/NLA composition tribocratically informed? I mean, based on the three greater regions we have in respect to their populations, which we just saw not long ago, is the current decreed Assembly regionally balanced? Are all regions politically represented in the national assembly proportionally to their population?
To ascertain whether or not there is tribocratic representation in the newly decreed national assembly, we must analyze the list itself in terms of the names and the regions they originate from. Based on Presidential Decree No.10/2011 for the Transformation and Reconstitution of the National Legislative Assembly of the Republic of South Sudan (2011), there are about 92 members from the Greater Upper Nile region, approximately 88 members from the Greater Bahr el Ghazal region, and close to 86 members from the Greater Equatoria region (with a generous allowance, of course, for a possible statistical error due to my own human error in arithmetic.) This calculation does not include the new 66 presidential appointees or the 50 South Sudanese members of the Council of States from Khartoum. The states of origin for the last two groups are not provided in the list of the presidential decree. Hence, it is a daunting task to classify them regionally.
In percentage proportionality, these figures, miraculously or by design, translate into about 35% for the Greater Upper Nile region, 33% for the Greater Bahr el Ghazal region, and 32% for the Greater Equatoria region. Similarly, in terms of population size, the Greater Upper Nile region led with 35%, followed by the Greater Bahr el Ghazal region with 33%, and then, lastly, the Greater Equatoria region with 32% of the total population. Therefore, it is fairly accurate to inferentially conclude that there is a fair and equitable representation of seats based on the proportional strength of each Greater region according to their respective population. And since this article is about tribocracy on a regional level only, I will not delve into the state level here, at least for now.
The People Cabinet
By sheer coincidence or by meticulous regional balancing act by the president, we have seen that the recently decreed SSLA/NLA somehow met and satisfied the principle of the tribocratic system; at least for those figures, we have analyzed. There is discernable political equality in the sharing of the political seats in the South Sudan Legislative Assembly across the three regions, namely, Greater Upper Nile, Greater Bahr el Ghazal and the Greater Equatoria region. Therefore, as far as the post-independence SSLA is concerned, tribocracy has been effected, and no region would begrudge the president on the ground of political discrimination.
If we apply the same tribocratic principle to the formation of the pending cabinet, what would it look like? Which ministries would go to which regions and why? In the determination of how many and which ministries would be given to which region, we must, in addition to the tribocratic model, acknowledge that not all ministries carry equal weights. This is because some ministries, like finance or defence, for instance, are more valuable and highly sought after than, say, the ministries of gender or forestry.
Thus, two factors that would guide us in the allocation of ministries to the three regions are the weights attached to each of the ministries under consideration and the proportional share of each region in the national government based on its population. Consequently, the next cabinet, if it were to be appointed on the basis of tribocracy, would have 35% of the seats going to the Greater Upper Nile regions of Jonglei, Unity, and the Upper Nile States. The four states of the Greater Bahr el Ghazal region—Warrap, Lakes, Western Bahr el Ghazal, and Northern Bahr el Ghazal—would take a 33% share of the cabinet seats, while Greater Equatoria—comprising of Central, Western, and Eastern Equatoria states—would bag a 32% share of the cabinet portfolios.
Considering that President Kiir has promised South Sudanese a lean and broad-based cabinet this time round, with say 22–25 members instead of the current 32 members, what will it look like if it were predestined on and by the principle of tribocracy? Tribocratically appointed, the final numbers that would make up the new cabinet won’t matter as much as the fact that 35% of the seats should be allocated to the Greater Upper Nile region, 33% to the Greater Bahr el Ghazal region, and 32% to the Greater Equatoria region. Secondly, the most plum ministerial posts—Legal Affairs, Defense, finance, presidency, vice presidency, interior or internal affairs ministry, foreign affairs, Speaker post, (SPLM SG post), etc.—must all be shared equally among the three greater regions of the Republic of South Sudan.
So what is the final outcome of the deliberation? Below is the tribocratically proposed list of the new cabinet of the Republic of South Sudan according to the wills and wishes of the majority of its citizens:
The Tribocratic Proposed list of the New Cabinet of the Republic of South Sudan according to the wills and wishes of the citizens of the Republic of South Sudan
1. The Tentative Cabinet of the Republic of South Sudan
| S/N | Ministry | Region |
| 1 | Office of the President | Greater Bahr el Ghazal |
| 2 | Office of the Vice President | Greater Upper Nile |
| 3 | The Speaker of the National Legislative Assembly | Greater Equatoria |
| 4 | SPLM Secretary General Office | Greater Upper Nile |
| 5 | Cabinet Affairs | Greater Equatoria |
| 6 | Ministry of Defense/SPLA and Veteran Affairs | Greater Bahr el Ghazal |
| 7 | Legal Affairs and Constitutional Development | Greater Upper Nile |
| 8 | Foreign Affairs/Regional Co-operation | Greater Equatoria |
| 9 | Interior/Internal Affairs | Greater Bahr el Ghazal |
| 10 | Labor and Public Services | Greater Upper Nile |
| 11 | Parliamentary Affairs | Greater Bahr el Ghazal |
| 12 | Finance and Economic Planning | Greater Equatoria |
| 13 | Road and Transport | Greater Bahr el Ghazal |
| 14 | Agriculture and Forestry | Greater Bahr el Ghazal |
| 15 | Animal Resource and Fisheries | Greater Upper Nile |
| 16 | Co-operative and Rural Development | Greater Upper Nile |
| 17 | Energy and Mining/Oil | Greater Upper Nile |
| 18 | Commerce and Industry | Greater Upper Nile |
| 19 | Wildlife Conservation and Tourism | Greater Upper Nile |
| 20 | Irrigation and Water Resources | Greater Bahr el Ghazal |
| 21 | Housing and Physical Planning | Greater Equatoria |
| 22 | Education | Greater Equatoria |
| 23 | Health | Greater Equatoria |
| 24 | Information | Greater Bahr el Ghazal |
| 25 | Communication and Postal Services | Greater Upper Nile |
| 26 | Gender, Social Welfare and Religious Affairs | Greater Equatoria |
| 27 | Culture and Heritage | Greater Bahr el Ghazal |
| 28 | Investment | Greater Bahr el Ghazal |
| 29 | Human Resource and Development | Greater Equatoria |
| 30 | Environment | Greater Equatoria |
| 31 | Higher Education, Science and Technology | Greater Bahr el Ghazal |
| 32 | Youth, Sport and Recreation | Greater Upper Nile |
| 33 | Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management | Greater Equatoria |
| 34 | Peace and CPA Implementation Affairs | Greater Upper Nile |
How the People Cabinet was Arrived at.
I have been patient enough to wait for President Kiir to make public his new cabinet line-up before I could propose mine. But since he is dragging his feet and taking too long to make known the new composition of the cabinet, I have taken the liberty of going ahead and proposing mine, guided by the spirit of tribocracy at the regional level. Above, as it is below here too, is my proposed shape and form of the cabinet that President Kiir will unveil soon in Juba, maybe this week. For the sake of convenience and familiarity, I have stuck to the original 34 members as the total number of cabinet portfolios, which would, of course, be revised when the exact number is revealed.
As you have surely recognized, I have included some relevant positions which are not really part of the cabinet portfolio but are still relevant in the balancing act of all important political positions in the country. This is so as to give a clear picture of why and how one region got what ministry and not the other one and vice-versa.
Given that we are basing our arithmetic on the proposed 34 positions to be shared out among the three greater regions each according to their share of the country’s total population, we are going to end up with the following outcomes: Greater Upper Nile, the most populous region in the country, will scoop 12 ministries (35% x 34 = 11.9); Greater Bahr el Ghazal will get 11 ministries out of the total 34 ministries (33% x 34 = 11.22) and the Greater Equatoria region will secure itself about 11 ministries too (32% x 34 = 11.88).
As for which particular ministry should or must go to which region, all I can say is that that is the trickiest part, as I found out the hard way when I assembled my small think tank of three people, each representing one of the three regions. The rule of the game was that four positions—presidency, vice presidency, speaker of the national legislative assembly, and the SPLM SG post—were all predetermined and therefore should be left that way. The second rule was that the Greater Equatoria region must be given the first two choices to pick any two ministries of their choice in order to compensate for the loss of the presidency and the vice presidency, which are already legally assigned.
The third rule was that each region thereafter must pick one ministry when its turn comes, and any ministry that has already been taken is non-negotiable; that is, it can’t be claimed by anyone else picking afterwards, for you can only choose from the pools of ministries that are still up for grabs on the table. The fourth rule was that some ministries that have more relevance to particular regions must be assigned to those regions. Energy and mining, for example, should be given to the Greater Upper Nile region since the oil is mined in the Unity state. Or any ministry that deals with land issues such as the Housing and Physical Planning ministry should be allocated to the Greater Equatoria region since land around Juba has been part of our national headache and would be better handled by someone from that area to assuage the fear of land grabbing.
And since Greater Bahr el Ghazal was assumed to have made the first choice in the presidency and the Greater Upper Nile in the vice presidency, it was the turn of the Greater Equatoria region to pick the first two ministries of their choice before the next chance would fall on Greater Bahr el Ghazal and so forth and so on till each region attains its mandatory quota of the cabinet positions as calculated above. But no sooner did we start the process than it abruptly ground to a halt, just a few minutes after we commenced the deliberation. Though each of the representatives was given an opportunity to make their best choice given what was on the table, it seemed each and every representative was never satisfied with one chance at a time.
For example, a representative from Greater Upper Nile or Greater Equatoria would pick, say, ministry X, while at the same time demanding that none of the next two guys should touch ministries Y and Z because, he assumed, those ministries should belong to them too, in total disregard of rule number three above. As the process got halfway, the representatives actually began threatening to walk out of the process itself, claiming unfairness and political coercion if they were not given certain ministries which they had failed to pick when it was their turn and which were now already chosen.
As I found myself between the rock and the hard wall, I began to realize why President Salva Kiir has yet to announce his cabinet. I started appreciating the political dilemma he is up to in real life given how I got myself entangled in this mess by just a mere hypothetical cabinet line-up. In fact, my assembled think-tank broke up in disarray and I had to arbitrarily assign some of the ministries that they could not agree on since they failed to arrive at a compromise formula over who should take which and why.
Though I pride myself on being a confirmed liberal democrat—of course, one that is modified and Africanized into tribocracy—I could not help myself longing for some kind of special power to tame and calm the rowdy team. It is little wonder that authoritarianism is such a prized system of governance in the People’s Republic of China. It gets things done in the quickest and most efficient way available without inviting unnecessary debate, which is done, sometimes, for the sake of itself, just to make oneself present known and to comfort oneself ego.
To recoup the main point and make things much easier and in deeper perspective for you, below is the tribocratically proposed list of the new cabinet of the Republic of South Sudan, with each ministry placed according to the region it is allocated to:
1. Greater Upper Nile Region
| s/n | Ministries Allocated to the Greater Upper Nile Region | Region |
| 1 | Office of the Vice President | Greater Upper Nile Region |
| 2 | SPLM Secretary General Office | Greater Upper Nile Region |
| 3 | Legal Affairs and Constitutional Development | Greater Upper Nile Region |
| 4 | Energy and Mining/Oil | Greater Upper Nile Region |
| 5 | Animal Resource and Fisheries | Greater Upper Nile Region |
| 6 | Co-operative and Rural Development | Greater Upper Nile Region |
| 7 | Wildlife Conservation and Tourism | Greater Upper Nile Region |
| 8 | Labor and Public Services | Greater Upper Nile Region |
| 9 | Communication and Postal Services | Greater Upper Nile Region |
| 10 | Commerce and Industry | Greater Upper Nile Region |
| 11 | Youth, Sport and Recreation | Greater Upper Nile Region |
| 12 | Peace and CPA Implementation Affairs | Greater Upper Nile Region |
2. Greater Bahr el Ghazal Region
| s/n | Ministries Allocated to the Greater Bahr el Ghazal Region | Region |
| 1 | Office of the President | Greater Bahr el Ghazal |
| 2 | Ministry of Defense/SPLA Affairs | Greater Bahr el Ghazal |
| 3 | Interior/Internal Affairs | Greater Bahr el Ghazal |
| 4 | Information | Greater Bahr el Ghazal |
| 5 | Agriculture and Forestry | Greater Bahr el Ghazal |
| 6 | Parliamentary Affairs | Greater Bahr el Ghazal |
| 7 | Irrigation and Water Resources | Greater Bahr el Ghazal |
| 8 | Higher Education, Science and Technology | Greater Bahr el Ghazal |
| 9 | Road and Transport | Greater Bahr el Ghazal |
| 10 | Investment | Greater Bahr el Ghazal |
| 11 | Culture and Heritage | Greater Bahr el Ghazal |
3. Greater Equatoria Region
| s/n | Ministries Allocated to the Greater Equatoria Region | Region |
| 1 | The Speaker of the National Legislative Assembly | Greater Equatoria Region |
| 2 | Finance and Economic Planning | Greater Equatoria Region |
| 3 | Foreign Affairs/Regional Co-operation | Greater Equatoria Region |
| 4 | Human Resource and Development | Greater Equatoria Region |
| 5 | Cabinet Affairs | Greater Equatoria Region |
| 6 | Environment | Greater Equatoria Region |
| 7 | Education | Greater Equatoria Region |
| 8 | Housing and Physical Planning | Greater Equatoria Region |
| 9 | Health | Greater Equatoria Region |
| 10 | Gender, Social Welfare and Religious Affairs | Greater Equatoria Region |
| 11 | Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management | Greater Equatoria Region |
As you can infer from the list, the fact that the cabinet could be a lean and broad-based one does not matter here because the ratio of political representation would still hold at all levels and in all numbers. For instance, should the President, who has already decreed a bicameral house of a humongous 382 members, decide to respect his words and unveil a cabinet of only 22 members as highly speculated, we can just readjust and recalculate that the three greater regions would each have the following portfolios: Greater Upper Nile 8 positions, Greater Bahr el Ghazal 7 positions, and Greater Equatoria 7 positions.
The issue of partisan inclusiveness and broad-basedness would be addressed at the regional level and is therefore not an issue at all. It is rather more of a political consideration than a tribalistic or political marginalization. After all, democracy has no room for political accommodation of the political losers. It is a winner-take-all scenario.
I am hesitant to name names for the ministries mentioned above because what matter is equality in political representation at the regional level, not who exactly is holding the office. If there were to be one ministry to be allocated to the Collo people, to take as an example, whether it is Hon. Pagan Amum or Dr. Lam Akol that take the office is not a problem to the Collo people so long as one of their own is in charge.
As we debate and digest the above-proposed list of the forthcoming South Sudan Cabinet, let’s wait and see what Benydit Salva Kiir Mayaardit has in store for us, South Sudanese. Meanwhile, get content with the distraction the above list may present to you and your pre-conceived notion of whatever you want to see in that long-awaited cabinet.
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