What will President Kiir say on Thursday today in his address to the nation?
3 min readBy Philip Thon Aleu, Juba, south Sudan
November 12, 2015 (SSB) — No outsider could precisely predict what the President will tell the nation on Thursday. The J1 advisors and ministers may be having some clues.
However, in recently national addresses, the president never surprised me at all and I am therefore lowering my expectations. (The only surprise for me was President Kiir’s order No# 36 that created 28 states on Oct 2nd).
That aside, there is no denial that the economic situation is now at a crisis level. For the last seven days I have not used by small car to come to work and return home. It has been very expensive for me. On average, I spend 100 South Sudanese Pound (SSP) to move from working station to various news sources.
This is much lower because another brother is picking me from home in the morning to work and back in the evening. If I were to use the boda-boda for the next ten days, my transport expenditure will be 1,000 SSP. This is more than the wages for a primary school teacher, a private police/army officer and several other junior government employees.
One would therefore expect the president to address the economic situation. I would expect the Head of State to call spade a spade. If there is no detailed afford, kindly allow the market forces – demand and supply, to determine the prices so that items like fuel are available in the towns. There should be one and single market; not black and white markets. It should be either black or white. Aren’t we one people, one nation and ought to have one market?
The minister of information said last week that $10 million is allocated to Alpha and Ivory Bank to import basic items but nothing has materialized to-date. We have had enough announcements on SSTV and it is time for really action – which will speak ‘louder than words.’
But if the president talk about the security arrangement signed last week with the SPLM IO and Former Detainees and the likelihood of the former foes visit to Juba soon, I will not be surprised.
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