South Sudan: Choices and Fundamentals of Nation Building
5 min readBy Mayen Ayarbior, Juba, South Sudan
January 19, 2016 (SSB) — Having taken the all-imperative first steps towards formation of the Transitional Government of National Unity (TGoNU), notwithstanding the current stalemate about the 28 states, we all hope that South Sudan is on the right path to becoming a viable nation-state. To all intents and purposes, every other political task is going to be built from scratch because our first (and hopefully last) real civil war has exposed our fragile institutions which could not prevent the war from breaking out.
For that reason of having incapacitated state institutions, the country’s perilous steps with nationhood sucked-in the entire world. From the UN Security Council, AU and its Security Council, Torika, EU, IGAD, to individual neighboring and distant countries all extended their help to South Sudan. Such initiatives from Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, South Africa, China, etc. created multiple platforms for the Government, SPLM-IO, SPLM-FDs, Civil Society and other political parties to discuss the civil war from a much deeper perspective beyond pointing accusing fingers toward individuals from opposite camps.
Considering that each of the countries from which we copied-and-pasted institutional organization has had a different historic path, that approach of borrowing everything could not have worked. In fact, our attempt to live with the state institutions that were created on those bases has miserably failed, as our country descended into a dark abyss, prompting the entire world to ring the alarm bells.
Now that the stage is going to be set for the ground work to begin, we hope that discussions on the best form of institutions for the country are going to be based on projections of national needs. Choices between federal or local governments, presidential or parliamentary systems, unicameral or bicameral legislature, size and composition of security sector institutions, powers and independence of the judiciary, cannot afford to be done on the 2005 “copy-and-paste” approach.
One of the main questions that are expected to preoccupy TGoNU deliberations ought to relate to the nature of South Sudan as a state. The choice between presidential or parliamentary systems, or even a parliamentary republic should be premised on the structure of our ethnic/tribal societies. While we could all be somehow familiar with the presidential and parliamentary systems, a Parliamentary Republic combines both systems into one. A close example is that of South Africa where the head of government is an executive president who is not voted into office directly but through his party.
I am sure, if well explained, most analysts will prefer that the post-TGoNU state of South Sudan is either a pure parliamentary system where a Prime Minister is head of government or a Parliamentary Republic where a President is head of both government and state. That preference is derived from the fact that both systems provide reasonable checks on the powers of the head of state through his/her political party which could replace him/her from within the party.
Considering that sub-Saharan African societies are communal in structure, a pure presidential system creates unnecessary tension between communities, especially during elections. It is only suitable for individualistic societies that are mostly found in in the western world, where individual merit counts for ninety-nine percent of one’s chances of becoming head of state. In communal societies, tribal and ethnic identification must contribute at least sixty percent of such chances, if not more, while merit is almost relegated to oblivion.
We may all recall that the crisis in our country was triggered by the fact that some party leaders had tried to mount a challenge against President Kiir through party (SPLM) channels, before the whole situation decended quickly into a civil war. In justification, some analysts quoted what happened to President (former) Thabo Mbeke of South Africa who was unseated from the presidency through internal ANC procedures. Yet, the big difference between the two situations is that South Africa is a Parliamentary Republic while we are a pure Presidential Republic where the head of state is directly elected by the people, hence may not be so much accountable to the party. They could even create a new party and still remain presidents.
Surely, the benefits of the two preferable parliamentary systems far much outweigh the risks of a pure presidential system with which we have been experimenting for the last decade, but to no avail. They (parliamentary systems) allow a collectivity (political party) to govern based on its programs, with vigorous internal checks on policy implementers by party organs such as party congresses and conventions. There are also external checks by parliament, which is not so much subdued by presidential powers since it is where party coalitions in government are made.
Considering that institutions are safer than human beings, even if they are run by humans, choices of political systems have been studied by almost all stable nation states in their path to sustainable political stability. They (choices) must be adopted on considerations of their merits and demerits as-well-as suitability to each country’s structural peculiarities and historic facts. And at this stage of building the foundation of a country like South Sudan, extensive analyses of suitable political institutions and brainstorming on choices should be expected in parliament, the media, and academia, before we settle on the right system.
Mayen Ayarbior has a Bachelor Degree in Economics and Political Science from Kampala International University (Uganda), Masters in International Security from JKSIS-University of Denver (USA), and Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from the University of London. He is the author of “House of War (Civil War and State Failure in Africa) 2013” and currently the Press Secretary/ Spokesperson in the Office of South Sudan’s Vice President, H.E. James Wani Igga. You can reach him via his email address: mayen.ayarbior@gmail.com.
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