Dear President Kiir Mayardit, Spare Us Your Monotonous Threats Mr. President and Act decisively
7 min readBy Kuol K. Alberto, Juba, South Sudan
May 3, 2016 (SSB) —- You have been a great president and there is more to appreciate in your leadership than to despise in you. But as a person, you have your weaknesses which either you don’t know or your close allies don’t tell you. This is the problem with having insincere friends and indeed, the ones that have encircled you are not all faithful to you. According to Aristotle, there are three types of friendship. There is friendship based on utility. This means, one becomes a friend to someone because of the usefulness of the other person. The service you get from another person lures you into friendship. Take for example, the barber, if one has one specific person that one goes to for hair cutting, the service provider becomes a friend to the one served based on the service provided. There is nothing much between them. Once this is done, friendship ceases.
There is also friendship based on pleasure. Whoever makes you happy automatically attracts you and you may casually call that person a friend because he/she gives you pleasure. Once this pleasure thing is done, friendship terminates. This type of friendship is very much evident in politics and much more among young people. If you constantly provide sweets for a young one, and one day you either intentionally or uncalculatedly forgot, the young one will definitely unfriend you. Finally, there is friendship based on virtue. This is centered on one’s personality regardless of what you get from such a person. It is the goodness of the other person that drives you to him/her but not because of any string attached like the first two. Whereas the above two types are temporary and short-lived, this type of friendship lasts. This is the best and only true friendship.
Why do I have to bore you with all these information which you might have already come across or thought it over by yourself? My simple reasoning is that, the first two types of friendship are the ones that have encircled you at the presidency. Among them too, are your advisers, cabinet ministers and your army generals. Just think this over, why can’t they do what you tell them? Why are foot soldiers still suffering when you have given them 60% of the total budget for this country to use for the establishment of the army? Why are roads not constructed yet in every cabinet from 2005 to date, there has been minister after minister for roads? Why is our population still living in abject poverty yet, we have a fertile land and people to work on it?
In short, they are friends to you because of what they get from serving you and not because of your goodness. Your true friends are those that tell you what is not going on well in your government and advise you on what to do. They are very far from you and they are not allowed to meet you by those that have surrounded you. You get these from their writings.
To come back to the title of this article since I have veered off, take it not as a command, but rather as something you have to work on so fast so that you regain the trust that common people have in your great leadership. Since you took up the leadership of the SPLM after the death of the founding father, people knew little about you. They knew you as a quiet and straightforward leader. They knew you as someone who executes plans effectively. They knew you as someone who has a heart for this nation’s progress. You went to the bush at a very young age for the sole reason of ensuring that your people live a better life. Now all that is shattered after you got to the top seat and people are wondering whether you have been bewitched or what truly happened to the one smart and able leader.
Mr. President, since the inception of South Sudan in July 2011, you have been giving stern warning to your subjects (ministers), orders which we expect to be followed. Has it ever crossed your mind, why are they are not being respected by the same people you are commanding? Why haven’t you taken up any legal action against any of these fellows that do not follow your orders ever since? The answer is simple, either you fear them and thus you can’t call whoever has erred to your office to be reprimanded or ask the court to follow its own legal proceedings. Or you are partner in the mess that is taking place and as such, you can’t come out openly to scold them less they strip you naked as well. To be honest with you as Jesus said, tell the truth and the truth will set you free, you might be involved in corruption, nepotism, land grabbing and all that has incapacitated this country from moving forward. How, by allowing others do them and yet you don’t act.
Now is the time to clean yourselves from all that you (our politicians) have made us go through. There are those that have been shouting so much, now they are in the government we want to see them performing. I have the following suggestions to you for this TGONU to perform better than the rest of the former government.
- Let each ministry presents a very well detailed proposal on what to do for one year (July –July next year). And when I say, very well detailed, it means it has almost every detail that is needed for example, how long will it be done, who will do it, how much is required to implement it, where is the project going to be done, risks and mitigation strategies and finally the monitoring mechanism. This should be the routine for the other year till your 28 months of this government elapses.
- Publicize these proposals so that the citizens know what each ministry is doing. It has come to the attention of the public that, things are done secretly and so doing this openly like this will create trust and confidence. It shall clear the doubt that there is nothing the government is doing. It will make us hopeful that though these developments initiative are being done on small scale at particular places, they will however at the end, spread across all places over time.
- For those projects that involve construction, there should be open and transparent procedure of bidding such that not only the companies of the ministers and their allies benefit as usual. We have good and experienced companies being managed and owned by common citizens and because they lack connections at the higher level, they don’t get a chance to deliver. There should be fairness in the selection process. There is this old adage that, Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God. Those companies that have what it takes to complete the implementation should be given the chance rather than favoritism as usual.
- Since you have thousands of politicians who have got nothing to do now, form among them, committees that will closely monitor these projects. Take their findings and recommendations very seriously. Their payment should be factored in the project proposal.
- Take legal procedures upon those that are found to have deviated from the plan so that this serves as a warning to the rest to toe the line.
Doing all this is far better than the warnings. People are tired. They need action. Say what you mean and vice versa. What is the essence of talking tough and no action. You are a church goer and I don’t know if you understand when it is said, faith without work is dead. Your threats without action are as well dead. With all trust and confidence, I believe if these few points and others that you might have, are taken into consideration, a bright future awaits this country at the corner.
You can reach the author, Kuol K. Alberto, at his email: kuolkuol2001@yahoo.com
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