Reconciliation is the only procedure for unification of South Sudanese
5 min readBy Daniel Machar Dhieu, Juba, South Sudan
November 24, 2015 (SSB) — Right now, we have our President who holds the executive powers, the legislative powers, power over the military, and the power to veto the drafted constitution or create another constitutional committee if he wishes. If this alone wasn’t disconcerting enough, let’s add to it the fact that there is no organized opposition to him, he seems intent on continuing the time-honored tradition of hiring loyalist unqualified hacks and lackeys for important government positions, he doesn’t seem to have any intentions of being democratic or even create a government out of the coalition that he created, with his supporters viscously attacking anyone who criticizes him, sometimes with religious overtones.
One would think that our president must have a huge mandate to be able to pull this kind of crap on all of us, but surprisingly enough, he doesn’t. He won with 99%, with almost half of his votes coming from secular innovative voters who simply didn’t wanted Dr. Lam Akol to win. In reality, if someone did the math, one would realize that at least 7.5 million of the 8 million voters who voted in the presidential elections in Southern part did not vote to have the war again in the country.
The Problem is SPLM itself; the party is so divided amongst tribes and regional bases that actually mess the country from the genesis of national crisis after independence. The SPLM failed the nation in many occasion such as delivering of public services to local people, corrupting public funds by some individuals. All above were labeled against the SPLM government as caused of the crisis in the nation. All in all there is need of reconciliation in-order to stop bloodshed in the nation.
Furthermore, I always believe that a corrupt and possibly murderous state is better than having no state, since they believe correctly that millions would suffer at the absence of state institutions, and incorrectly that such a state can be reformed with time and also believe that no state is better than having a corrupt and murderous state, and that such a state would need to be brought down and rebuilt correctly for the sake of our long-term benefit, even if in the meantime millions end up suffering the absence of what little state they had.
Although, we will not forgive those who failed us in this movement of freedom and chosen to back us to war situation, we will never vote them into power in the second round of the presidential elections instead. The citizen became victim to opposition parties for SPLM in the first round of elections instead of other political parties but incoming year the citizens will more opposition to SPLM leadership in-order to repute their profiles.
Both sides are silly because their point of contention doesn’t matter anymore, and what unites them is so much more than what divides them. The argument over the state is debatable, because we live in all states and in reality no longer have one, so, the focus should be how to build it right this time around and not over who dropped the ball. The argument over implementation of the IGAD compromised peace agreement is stupid because all the people across the country need peace other than war, and if we are truly democratic, we should be able to respect each other’s choices and not hold it against them now.
As for the Character debate, well, besides the ridiculous notions that each side has about the other, if you are serious about loving this country and rebuilding it, you need both. We have so many problems one doesn’t even know where to begin, and we are stuck in this country together. And here is where we agree: We want a state that respects all of our rights, one where government services function, one where corruption doesn’t rule supreme and where the arts are not considered satanic distractions. We want a country that we can be proud of and that has a future. But if this is the case, why can’t we reconcile?
Well, we can’t reconcile primarily for the second reason: Our symbols. Both sides are not only silly mirrors of each other when it comes to organization or personal beliefs so strong they border on demagoguery, but also when it comes to our political symbols and leaders: They all they need reconciliation to take place.
Reconciliation is a process that requires both sides to have mature respectable political leadership. Which is lacking for the SPLM and the other parties? The SPLM symbols are big on platitudes, but have no real experience or solutions beyond theoretical ones and are too cowardly to take risky stands, and opposition’s symbols are so nonexistent, that they have to pretend that people like Dr. lam Akol and many other leaders are respectable representations of them, which they are not, but it’s all they have. It should go without saying that those symbols and leaders, on both sides, should be retired by their respective audience due to their utter failure to do something productive, but for some odd reason this is not happening, and hence our current state of halfway house.
Let every faction get equal representation to its side first, and then we can worry all we want about reconciliation.
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