Miscarriage of Justice in South Sudan: Life Jail term for the 16 junior employees of State House
4 min readBy Deng Lueth Yuang, Canada
June 16, 2016 (SSB) — Frankly speaking, most of them are Dinkas from Pres Kiir’s own Dinka tribe. Some could be his own clansmen. Some from other Dinka sub-tribes, Kenyans and/or 1 or 2 persons from the Equatoria region (Non-Nuers, but from a place with an amalgamation of minority tribes in South Sudan).
In brief, my early studies indicated that handing such kinds of judgement in the annals of a South Sudan’s nation are contrived. Talk about the SPLA/M vision – towns to the people, Riek Machar’s coup d’état and 75 public thieves! Nothing happened for a real cause but just a mere public stunt.
To my surprise, most of these men and women: were used, accepted to be used and connived with some top dogs in the president office to use their ‘assigned’ VIPs official positions [not meritorious but quackery) within the presidency to amass ill-gotten wealth for their own future prosperity.
Here are the fundamental reasoning:
- Most of them had conflict of interest. Both the executive director Mayen Wol and his deputy Yel Luol hail from one ‘locality’; Chaat Paul with his daughter Anyieth and husband Agou Wuoi, used his status within the president office; Kenyans being IT/computer experts and their owners facilitated president fake signature and rest of the parties used their wittiness, connections and job status to help their bosses who wanted to get rich quick.
- Is Pres Kiir’s assent to sign any letter/memo seeking financial intervention from the highest national organs of government such as the Treasury and Central Bank a MUST so that it goes through – without prior investigations and approvals by a legitimate body or person(s) assigned to act upon it especially an accounting officer from his office to sign and present it to an appropriate authority for such transactions to be verifiably honoured – needs checked, costs cross-checked and proper withdrawals made within the confines of the Presidency Budget not the Treasury or Central Bank, private banks, forexes, etc. Smell fishy deals here.
- Heard there are other 14 ‘lemons’ from Treasury/Finance Ministry and Central Bank who conspired with those 16 caged animals. Where are they? They could bear the highest administrative ‘criminal’ responsibility for condoning such sinistral behaviours.
- When and how did Pres Kiir, himself, become a controller of budgets in his own office – a head of state; a father and a husband; an SPLA commander in chief; a general; a chief justice, etc.?? Too, smell a rat here.
- When you can imprison a junior staffer who was insidiously intimidated, forced and/or coerced by a senior officer to conduct such a scandal on his own behalf – what will happen to those big papas and mamas who President Kiir wrote the letters to return back $4 billion they ran away with from 2005-2010? Some of them are still serving this same government up to date. Some are living at large and have fled the land to live on mansions they bought with stolen money abroad. And some are rebels fighting this same government so that they acquire plum government appointments, not the public grievances they seem to echo.
- Were proper investigation mechanisms employed? Handing a life imprisonment verdict is an unfair sentence especially if one didn’t take anyone life. Some could be the main perpetrators while the rest subsidiary/subservient – were recruited to act on behalf of the big fishes! Base charges that way. It is jurisprudential. Fair enough.
- Was recovery of alleged stolen money (14 million dollars) done? If so, why life in prison? Give a one, two or a 5-year sentence to stay behind bars so that such corrupt incidents won’t occur in the future.
- If these scandal cases can happen in the highest office on the land – a president office – how many such cases are happening daily in each levels of the governments – states, ministries, counties, private sector, chief’s, etc.?
- Was presiding judge and prosecuting officers compromised and/or sub-judicious – functionally semi-literate and inexperienced? Or there was a discriminatorily application of their constitutional obligations with biasedness based on tribal and age inclinations?
- Why is Pres Kiir becoming an endemical and a polemical character in all dirty games taking place these days in the country? Do his handlers really understand how popular a president can become to win an election or people’s hearts; how a democracy other than dictatorship is the best governance system in the world today?
Interestingly, nowadays, as Charles Darwin once stressed: only the strongest survive.
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