Experience is simply the Name We Give to our Mistakes: A Response to Michael Joseph
8 min readExperience is Simply the Name We Give to our Mistakes: A Response to Michael Joseph’s Article on Mayiik Ayii Deng
By David Deng Chapath, Kampala, Uganda
March 28, 2017 (SSB) — In the recent article written by Michael Joseph entitled: Mayiik Ayii Deng – a Poison in the Office of the President. In order to show through his explanation how Mayiik is a poison in the Office of the President, he made the following allegations or accusations against him—
The first accusation is that Mayiik is semi-illiterate and because if that he was not supposed to be appointed as Minister in the Office of the President. That the appointment of Mayiik is a political shame to the entire nation and further added that it is sufficiently alarming that Mayiik Ayii is creating a culture of corruption and embezzlement in the office of President.
In addition, he accused Mayiik that he had failed miserably to complete his senior Secondary School in Khartoum. Michael backed his point based on rumors which are circulating in the streets of Juba that Mayiik is incompetent, uneducated and extremely corrupt Minister to ever run the Office of the President ever
Furthermore, he stated that Mayiik has no capacity to run the Office of the President as he is not able to draft a Memo or take a simple note. That most of the Ministers are complaining that Mayiik is not picking his phone and has no time for them and reason according to Michael Joseph accused Mayiik of refusing to pick calls is due to the fear of exposing his incapacities if he picks. Whether fear to pick phone calls is a sign of incapacities is not clear.
Michael also accused Mayiik of corrupting oil sector by intimidating the Management of Nilepet and conspiring with his cronies to control the Oil Sector. That Mayiik is also intimidating the Management of Nilepet to settle his unnecessary bills. That he had purchased a luxury house in Nairobi in December 2016 after getting kickback from Oil Operating Company.
He further accused Mayiik that he is misleading the president with inaccurate information that he is connected to the world leaders and his main objective is to enrich the syndicate and to create an oligarch in the Oil Sector. That Mayiik is humiliating and dismissing qualified cadres in Oil industries in the name of the President.
That Mayiik is conspiring to replace the senior officials in the Presidency with his corrupt friends as he did in the Oil sector and he doesn’t want any person who is an obstacle to his organized theft in the Presidency. Mayiik has no political capacity to managed and restructure the office of the President. There are crucial evidences that the Minister and his cronies are terrorizing and intimidating everyone in the Presidency.
Finally, that Mayiik and his friends are engaging in illicit businesses that are damaging the image of the President by planning a serious war of economic resources and control through a serious criminal networking established by Mayiik and Ezekiel Lol to manipulate the Marketing of Crude Oil. That Mayiik and Ezekiel Lol were perfectly placed to use the power of the public office to dispense personal gain for themselves.
In response to the above accusations of Michael Joseph who is a PhD Student at the University of Stanford International, I would like to say that approach he took was not in line with his title.
Being a PhD student means someone is oriented philosophically and his approach would have not been the same as secondary school leaver. The question is: what now shows the difference between Michael Joseph and Mayiik is attacking. If Michael believes that he is highly educated as he title indicates why does he not approach the issue of the Minister in the Office of the President with maturity?
Most of the allegations Michael made against Mayiik are unfounded for several reasons: First of all, Michael accuses Mayiik of being semi-illiterate and because of that he accused him of being incompetent but the question is: how different are some of the majority of PhD holders we know are different from any other ordinary citizens in South Sudan? In other words, who are responsible for our suffering now in South Sudan if not PhD holders?
Hence, if being highly educated is a source of good governance why are we suffering under the hands of PhD holders who see power as the ultimate aim? I should not however be seen as if I am against PhD holders all but the crux of my argument is that someone cannot be a good administrator simply because he is highly educated so such allegation against Mayiik was ill made against him.
Second to it, Michael accused Mayiik of not being able to draft even memo or taking note what he fails to understand even with his PhD is that drafting is a skills that is acquired through practice. Therefore, even the brightest student who gets first class in University cannot draft memo unless he or she is trained how to draft such a document. This is because all documents we draft ranging from ordinary letters to memos have particular features which need particular training. Thus, failure to draft does not either show incompetency or illiteracy. Hence such allegation is baseless.
Thirdly, Michael Joseph further accused Mayiik of refusing to pick calls which according to him is a sign of incapacity. This accusation is misconceived and it is also a reason to assign to refusing to pick a call. If that is the case, can we say that someone who is not in any office but refuses to pick calls refuses because of exposing his or her incapacity? What is being incapacity in refusing to picks calls anyway?
If though the allegations of refusing to pick calls might be correct, but reasons attached to it is wrong, which shows that Michael is making up allegations just want to get what he wants to say because he did not have anything to say.
Fourthly, Michael Joseph also relies on remours as indicated in his article such allegations based on hearsay is based baseless ground and Michael must learn to get the facts before making any accusation otherwise he is risk of facing civil liability in defamation if he will not avoid relying on remours.
Fifthly, Michael made unsubstantiated allegations that one of the oil companies admitted paying bribe of millions USD to the Petroleum Planning committee headed by the so – called Mayiik. If Michael was sure of what he is saying he should have mentioned the name of the company to enable those who have an interest in the case have to follow up. However, by making this kind of allegation, Michael proves that he is relying on hearsay allegations which are bad in law. Hence, Michael is just making unfounded allegation and what he said in that article should not be taken seriously by the readers.
Sixthly, Michael Joseph wrote that Mayiik is misleading the president that he knows the world leaders. This is allegation is one of the misplaced allegations and I wanted to ask Michael a simple question that between the President and Mayiik who knows world leaders to rely on who? Automatically, the answer is that President Kiir knows all the world leaders and Mayiik is the one to rely on him, which means that this accusation is just unfounded.
Finally, Michael stated that there are more substantial indications that the so – called Mayiik Ayii and his associates are fighting everyone in the government to pave their way for their chronic looting and that stories began circulating in the street of Juba that Mayiik Ayii and his cronies are conspiring to replace the SPLA Chief of General Staff and Akol Paul, the Deputy Minister of Information and Telecommunication.
Whereas I will not support Mayiik if it is proved that he is conspiring against General Paul Malong Awan and Hon. Deputy Minister Akol Paul, nevertheless, I cannot rely on what Michael wrote in that article because it is based on unfounded hearsay which makes such an allegation baseless and does not warrant any attention.
In summary, therefore, I would like to advise all students and other writers that they must know the limits of the freedom of speech and expression. Not everything that comes to our mind we should be writing down. There must be evidence to act as a correct reason in backing our allegations.
In addition, making mistakes is part of experience, which is simply the name we give our mistakes. Therefore, it is not every mistake that we make that leads to condemnation. Hence, if Mayiik has made some mistakes then the condemnation and castigation should not be the answer but the students must learn the diplomatic way of correcting such mistakes.
The students should know how to approach issues. Thus, if they believe that Mayiik is wrong, then they should approach to correct him rather than going to the social media to publish unfounded information. This is because publishing fake news may be counterproductive as people may lose trust in what one writes.
Finally, the reason Mayiik may not pick phone calls may not be because intent it but may be because he busy when a person is calling as the schedule in the Office of the President is tied as he is always busy.
Based on the above, I would like to tell the public that they should not believe in what in Michael Joseph has written against Mayiik not because I am defending him but they are baseless allegations and what I am defending is the truth.
NB//: the author is South Sudanese student residing in Uganda and can be reached through: dengdavid00@gmail.com
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