Open Letter to Salva Kiir: You won't block the Change in South Sudan Forever
By Dak Buoth, Nairobi, Kenya
March 27, 2017 (SSB) — Hello Mr. President. How are you? I saw you on Citizen TV merely staring at people during IGAD summit held in Nairobi yesterday. And you look very timid and fidgeting yet you still have the gut to say that you’re the President of the Republic of South Sudan. With all due respect, you were floating seemingly clueless throughout the session. I actually pitied you.
If I may ask, do you really care to know what it means to be the head of state? I doubt whether you know what you’re doing! Did anyone ever whisper to you that you’re a Head of ‘Refugee State’ with over 1.5 million people displaced or that is just number? I do not think so. If at all you were aware and concern of anguish we are going through, thing could be different, and perhaps you could not just be spectating when the Agenda revolve around refugee affairs.
I must say that you don’t fit in that club. To be sincere, you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And this is because you have stop learning; if you had the desire to know what it takes, the job could be easy for you to handle these hurdles. In my view your incapability emanated from the complacency that you have perfected; and I realized this is where the rain starts beating us.
In August 2016, Jeff Koinange posted a question to you in an interview in Juba, ‘‘What is good being President”? You answered saying inter alia, I don’t know, and that it is involuntary prison. I really jeered you that day. Even a standard one child or cattle herder would disagree with you on that. How could the presidency be equated with prison? You cannot find such answer from any sitting or former head of state here or abroad. In fact you have shown complete ignorance of your roles and duties to manage the plights of South Sudanese.
The Presidency is constitutional docket whose cardinal aims are to ventilate and nurture the dreams and aspirations of all citizenry in bid to improve their well-being. A holder of this noble post ought to be visionary person who does thing out of conviction and not a missionary-like lot who is being directed like robot. I say quite frankly that you are just assuming to be the president of South Sudan, and only a naive individuals would deny this tangible reality.
In any event, a presidency gets its legitimacy from the constitution or statute like (ARCISSS) that has been domesticated. In contrast, I have never heard you quoting the law in all your undertakings. You hardly say I Salva Kiir, with powers conferred upon me by constitution, I did this and that. The weird decrees that you often issued are repugnant to our interim transitional constitution 2011. You gave yourself unconstitutional powers to appoint MPS, Governors and cabinet ministers and dismiss them at whim, and you have archaic powers over life and death. You ruled South Sudan like feudal king of the 18th century.
It is public knowledge that your tenure elapses in 2015. You have outlived you legitimacy and usefulness. Now you are simply an auxiliary president who is ruling the country by duress, and this is the bond of contention. We have tried to build national consensus through peace accord signed in Addis Ababa which led us to give you benefit of doubt. However, for fear of unknown, you escaped the same peace by creating tribal 28 states, and subsequently unleashed violent on the principals to the agreement which rendered the peace deal dead.
The parliament has become robbers’ stamp, and those retrogressive elites had given that August House a bad name. It is now called the house of shame. You have converted the chief justice into mere errand boy to the executive. Your own militia groups are busy cutting down the tree of freedom (bill of rights) in South Sudan.
Your latest project known as national dialogue is far-fetch. You initiated it with malicious intent. It is just water under the bridge. The people you appointed without consultation to spearhead that dialogue are now quitting smartly. Your dialogue is now limping into the grave, and it will soon fall and die natural death.
South Sudanese said loudly that they cannot swallow lies again, and that they have always fall victim of your dishonesty. Since the advent of this so called National dialogue, I have asked you and company simple questions, is it intra- dialogue or national dialogue? And whose peace and security are we talking about?
Recently, I learned in the mud of politics, there are two types of peace. When you find the sheep are lying together in harmony, peace prevails amongst them. If a lion comes and grabs one of the sheep, it kills it, goes and sits under a tree; that lion also needs peace to eat the sheep. So now are we talking about lion’s peace or the sheep’s peace? In this case the sheep are the civilians in the IDPS, the Didinga Nuer, Acholi, Shilluk, Dinka and Bari just to mention but a few, and those of us who run into exile. On the other hand, the lions are you Guys in Juba.
Since 2013, your regime have looted peoples’ properties; you militia men have occupied our houses in Juba, and about 70,000 thousand innocent people were killed by SPLM-led regime. Now it reached a time to eat all that you grabbed for five years. So the boot-lickers who sung SPLM tune want peace so as to continue exploiting the people and oppress the opposition and civil society leaders. I believe this is the kind of peace that they would like to exist.
‘‘whoever does not fight the growth and development of dictatorship at these preparatory states is not in a position to prevent its victory, but, on the contrary, facilitates that victory, and facilitates its growth and development’ George Dimitrov. The revolutionary personnel and patriots would not fall into cheap traps.
First and foremost, you dialogue with your sycophants, and come to us later when you’re sober. Whether we burn or not, there will be no such peace and stability as long as there is no freedom and justice; as long as the perpetrators of war crimes are not taken to court; as long as your militia continues to occupy our houses in juba. How can we dialogue when thousands are in detention without trails! How can we dialogue when you are colluding with indigenous imperialist to deport rights defenders in Nairobi Kenya? We cannot dialogue when you prevent humanitarian access in the opposition home turf.
Unbeknown to you, there are earth-moving forces on the trenches to push and put you and cohorts behind bars. It is high time we left our judges alone if we want peace. We cannot have judiciary which is promoting peace and justice if it is not left to work freely. I think it is important that we learn to listen to each other for us to move forward together or else quit the kitchen if it’s too hot for you. i can assure that you wont block the change forever, because a change whose time has come cannot be prevented to see the light.
The Writer can be reached for comments via eligodakb@yahoo.com
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