Diagnosing South Sudanese Political Parties for Sustainable Peace
By Umba Peter Bosco, Istanbul, Turkey
November 3, 2015 (SSB) —- Leaders and governments are often smart enough to promise and take oath on the very day they assume office, but also quick to defend their failures in the process of their leadership. On May 21, 2010, President Salva Kiir held a Bible and said “The people of South Sudan want peace, better living standards and freedom which my government will strive to achieve. I will not be a disgrace to the people who showed confidence in me by re-electing me back to office.” He reiterated his commitments on July 9, 2011 when South Sudan officially became an independent state by saying that corruption will aptly be dealt with.
Within very short time, the commitments made by President Salva Kiir and his government were compromised by thirst for wealth and power by some government officials who engaged in massive corruption, embezzlement, and mismanagement of public resources. Frustration and dissatisfaction among few pro-citizen government officials and citizens in general resulted in steep criticism and opposition against the government for turning a blind to the above heinous crimes. Hence, on December 15, 2013, the people of South Sudan experienced an unimaginable civil war. The main cause of this civil war has been attributed to undemocratic practices and corruption entertained by the government and the ruling party.
A factor that has received little consideration especially among ordinary citizens that might be the actual cause of the crisis is power politics within the ruling party. The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) is South Sudan’s ruling party which is predominantly Dinka and Nuer with scanty number of other ethnicities holding less influential positions. Moreover, the SPLM is a swarm of mostly ignorant people with little or no political knowledge and understanding of political issues. As such opportunistic politicians have an available and manipulable population within the same party. Such ignorant support base provides best opportunities for selfish politicians to meet their interests during crises such as the one that started in December 2013 in which mostly the two dominant ethnicities and a few others from Equatoria were mobilized and misinformed about the real issues at state.
It would have been impossible for President Salva Kiir and his counterpart Dr. Machar to rally huge numbers of supporters behind them to fight in a meaningless war whose outcome is negative for the ordinary citizen but positive for high ranking politicians. Withal, something can still be done to save the country from the malicious plans of political dragons in South Sudan.
Apart from the recently signed peace agreement, a lot still needs to be done within not only the SPLM, but all political parties in South Sudan in order to cleanse the country and its leaders in particular. The peace agreement and the Transitional Government of National Unity (TGNU) that is yet to be established should be perceived as an opportunity to re-organize political parties and reshape party politics during and after the transitional government. All political parties should be de-registered and registered afresh. By establishing objective rules and regulations to guide the registration process, party objectives, visions, manifestos, recruitment strategies and staffing of party structures will be critically scrutinized hence allowing only visionary and democratic parties with citizen-oriented programmes to register. If this is going to happen, the registration process should be designed in a manner that discourages political parties from ethnic recruitment of members thus preventing the emergence of ethnic parties as is the case now.
Therefore, the political diagnostic approach I have presented in this short piece requires keen attention from the upcoming TGNU so as to address and eliminate, forever, the root cause of South Sudan’s political catastrophes which lies at the party level. Sustainable peace cannot be achieved by peace agreements alone, but also by initiating political reforms at the party level. In fact, some prominent individuals argue that the secession of South Sudan from Sudan should have been immediately followed by restructuring of party (SPLM in particular) structures as well as revision of their agenda to suit new demands instead of relying on the ones envisioned by the then pro-unity SPLM.
By Umba Peter Bosco is a South Sudanese conflict studies student at Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey. He can be reached at umba.peter@yahoo.com
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