Dear Acuil Malith: The “WUT IDEOLOGY” would lead to 200 States in South Sudan
3 min readBy Dr. Costello Garang Ring, Berlin, Germany
January 19, 2017 (SSB) — Dear Acuil Malith Banggol, as a friend I know for a long time and during the time of our struggle I need really not mention to you my humble contribution to the liberation of our country.
Starting from being the second eldest representative of the SPLM/A after Benjamin Bol who was murdered in cold blood to the formation of NilePet together with Riek Machar and Kuol Manyang after being authorized to do so by Dr. John Garang to bringing Huawei to South Sudan and handing it over to Gerchuong to form Gemtel as ordered by Dr. John Garang.
Most of the points you have mentioned are theoretically valid but are not found implemented anywhere. “Dear Dr. Costello Garang: What you demonizes as “Tribal Federalism” is our objective reality“
South Sudan is not a “One Party State“ and is not intended to be, so I would rather therefore refer to the constitution of the Republic instead of that of our political party. I was representing the whole nation in my activities and not the chiefdom of my father, Paramount Chief Riiny Lual Dau, or the Malual Dinka or my state of Northern Bahr El Ghazal. This is exactly what my article reflects.
You are confirming what I called „tribal Federalism“. We could also call it “Wut- Federalism“ if you prefer it to be termed so. The problem, my brother, is that this is a truly Dinka terminology. I doubt that many other tribes in South Sudan have this idea of “wut“. My fear is that if we were to follow “wut-federalism“ on all levels and by all tribes, we might end up having 200 states. The SPLM/A wanted to bring towns to the people and not the people to the towns.
Dr. John Garang meant bringing services to the people, so as to remain in their areas and not go to live in slums in the towns. He also didn´t mean bringing salaries to the party cadres by creating endless states that cannot serve the people.
As an economist, Dr. John would have been the first to reject such impotent states as I explained in the example of Germany. My main point has been the ability of a state to fund its own activities and not merely to respect the character of a wut as a wut.
The 32 states don´t even reflect the numbers and the characters of the WUOT you are talking about. Astonishingly we shouldn´t have waited for internal conflicts and for the state to get bankrupt before raising the number of the states from 10 to 28 and from 28 to 32. The ideology of wut was already present before that.
Let us wait for the coming generations for South Sudan to be much richer than Germany or Switzerland so as tob e able to fund their states. If necessary, they will create more states in peace and prosperity.
I´m not principally against creation of new states if they carry the burden of financing themselves.
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