Should Both President Kiir and Dr. Machar “Go” to Salvage the Nation?
7 min readThe best and workable solution for the Current Crisis in South Sudan
By Stephen Miyong Nyuon
There is no easy solution to the current conflict in South Sudan. Both the government and political intuitions of South Sudan have been wrongly established since 2005 when the CPA was signed.
However, the current political power struggle among the SPLM cadres began after the death of Dr.John Garang De Mabior. The conflict which had erupted on December 15, 2013 would have been triggered before South Sudan independence if some senior SPLM leaders have not handled it with care. What has happened in our country was caused by lack of a prudent leader.
There are four groups in South Sudan today. These four groups are involved in this senseless war taking place in the south Sudan. The first group is a group which controls the wealth of South Sudan. This group includes President, Salva Kiir, Dr. Riek Machar, 11 politicians who are currently under detention, and their business associates. This group controls all the government apparatus. They award the government contracts to their relatives; ration out the government funds to their tribesmen or friends.
The second group composes of their political puppets. This group includes Khartoum former NCP who have just joined the SPLM party such as Dr. Riek Gai Kok, Mr.Manassah Magok Rundial, Dr. Martin Ellia, and others just to name a few. These political puppets are being controlled by the President Kiir. They praise and worship the President Kiir to achieve their dirty ends. They make themselves inferior to the President. They also enslave themselves and ill advice the President.
The third group is the innocent soldiers who are misled by the President to defend his failed government. This group is the one killed the innocent and unarmed civilians across the South Sudan. Their generals have been bribed by the President with money and positions. To mention only a few, the recent integrated militia leaders in Unity State and Upper Nile State.
The fourth group is a group of hungry people who have not even seen the fruit of independence of South Sudan. This group includes the so-called the White army, the so called Dootku Beny, former SPLA unconfirmed fighters, sons of the martyrs, unemployed youth. All these four groups involved in this senseless war.
The first group disagreed among themselves over who should take the ticket of the Chairmanship of the SPLM party comes 2015 elections. Then, they divided themselves into two groups. Some of them went with the President, Kiir and others followed the Former Vice President, Dr. Riek Machar. The other three groups consequently lined up themselves with either the sitting President or the Former Vice President.
I urge all the South Sudanese to preach for peace in our country even though is going to be very difficult at this moment. I know personally that it is hard for our tribal communities to restore trust back due to the collateral damages they have done to themselves.
Hopefully God shall clean our hearts to live in peace and harmony. We want a national reform in South Sudan. The south Sudan we all envisioned is a democratic south Sudan, which shall protect our dignity, freedom, equality, justice, and prosperity for all.
Based on what I narrated above, I would recommend the following solutions:
- The current leadership under both the President and the Former Vice President must go because they failed the South Sudan.
- South Sudanese should form Military Transitional Government to guide South Sudanese to the general elections.
- Otherwise, UN should run South Sudan affairs to establish strong institutions until the South Sudanese people restore trust among themselves.
- Decentralization where the Presidency should be rotated among the 10 states of the South Sudan.
- Or, South Sudan should be reunited again with the old Sudan because we failed to govern ourselves as the South Sudanese.
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Other tribes in South Sudan should not stay at aloof in this conflict. They should strongly warn the Dinka and Nuer not to destroy the South Sudan.Thanks
Stephen Miyong Nyuon
Chairperson of SPLM Nebraska Chapter
Response from Gordon Buay,
Intellectually speaking, I have concerns about the recommendations of my brother Stephen Miyong. My first concern is the recommendation that “both President Kiir and Riek Machar must go”. The question is how? The reason for asking this question is that there are peaceful ways of retiring politicians. The first one is a general democratic election where all the people of the country decide who should lead them. The second is when delegates of the party reject the candidacy of a certain politician to become the party’s candidate in the general election.
The second recommendation of Miyong that a military council should take over until an election is conducted tantamount to a coup de etat. How could a military council retire both President Kiir and Riek Machar without a coup? In Egypt, a democratically elected President Morsi was deposed by an army General who created his own world order.
Whatever recommendations we give to resolve the current crisis in South Sudan should be based on reality and the reality is that there can be no military council leading the country without a bloodshed. What happened on December, 15, is a coup similar to what happened in Egypt. The only difference is that Riek’s loyalists lost while the military in Egypt succeeded to arrest an elected President.
Anybody advocating for a military council to take over is actually recommending more crisis because history attests that there is no military takeover without violence. Such a suggestion violated the AU Charter which sanctions military in Africa to meddle themselves in political affairs.
Most importantly, I don’t know whether Miyong is trying to tell us that IGAD, AU and the international community would really support the SPLA to stage a coup to depose President Kiir in the middle of a civil war. Riek Machar is now a rebel hiding from Tukul to Tukul. The only person who can be overthrown right now is the elected President Kiir who survived a coup last year. The international community would really have difficulty accepting the recommendations of Stephen Miyong because they don’t correspond with realities on the ground.
There are two ways for a military to take over power in the history of modern world. The first one is a bloodless coup. The second one is the bloody coup. Miyong needs to tell us how SPLA military council would take over power, suspend the constitution as it happened in Egypt and create a new world order without bloodshed.
The international community has taken a unanimous position that the only way to remove President Kiir is through ballot box. Riek Machar right now cannot get support internationally because his call for a military solution is a threat to the AU Charter and the governments of Africa. There is no country in Africa that will support Riek Machar to overthrow an elected President for losing in a party’s primary. Even Omer Bashir is threatened by Riek Machar’s idea because if he supports him, his neighbors would do the same when the NCP is in crisis.
Riek Machar naturally is not intelligent that is why he is not a shrewd politician. He doesn’t know the law of boomerang in politics. This law is the one scaring African leaders about his call to overthrow President Kiir. If any African leader supports Riek Machar, he is digging his own grave because his neighbors will do the same when he has a political crisis in his party. Few in the region would really entertain a call to overthrow an elected President after a candidate loses a party’s contest.
You cannot be a shrewd politician if you don’t know that politics is a profession governed by the laws of human nature. When Riek Machar dismissed Lam Akol from SPLM/A-United in 1993, I told my friends at the time that Nasir Declaration Movement would not succeed because Riek fired the brain of the Movement. Indeed Riek Machar didn’t achieve anything after the dismissal of Lam Akol until he surrendered to the same John Garang he hated in 2002.
To become a successful politician, you need to understand human nature and how human being operates. A lot of politicians on earth are wondering why Riek Machar did not form his party to challenge President Kiir in the general election. People are wondering how he preferred a military solution that would lead innocent people to perish as we now witnessed in Greater Upper Nile region.
Honestly speaking, Riek Machar could have been a serious challenger to President Kiir if he formed his own party because he was getting some support among Dinka elites in Greater Upper Nile and Greater Bhar-el-Ghazal regions. But after what happened on December, 15, 2013, Riek lost all his supporters and he cannot stand in front of South Sudanese again to tell them anything.
His supporters from Greater Bhar-el-Ghazal thought he was a man of peace who believed in democracy. Little did they know that the man proclaimed himself as a vicar of Ngundeng on earth who believed in superstition and myth to become a president without election. Riek thought that his political ascendancy to power was predetermined by Ngundeng that what he wanted from the people of South Sudan was to acknowledge that without election. When he realized that Salva Kiir defeated him within the SPLM, he opted for a military solution which he said was also preordained and predicted by Ngundeng to take place.
Maj. Gen. Gordon Buay Malek
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