President Kiir’s refusal to work with Dr. Riek Machar is letting down South Sudan
5 min readBy Apioth Mayom Apioth, North Dakota, USA
Monday, June 25, 2018 (PW) — It is essential for our dear leader Salva Kiir to create a conducive working relationship with Riek Machar because our lives might just depend on it. Politics unlike culture which takes an enormous amount of time to make a substantial change is an emotional animal. It changes from one second to the next without sending a warning signal. Riek Machar has been in this galactic political arena for over thirty years.
He was first believed to be a spiritual anointed leader by Ngundeng, and now he has become the leading opposition figure in the land. Political success just doesn’t happen by pure luck and serendipitous wishful thinking. An intelligent political thinker must first and foremost play his/her cards of wins and losses very well; he/she must at all times knows that she would never win all her initiated games; that is why it is always essential to be a shrewd schemer whose game plans are hard to shake off.
Is Salva Kiir afraid of losing the presidency to Riek Machar comes the end of the transitional period? Is that why he is refusing to share a spotlight with Riek Machar in the Transitional government? Another essential element that an intelligent political thinker must control at all times is the political sentiment. Political sentiment is another emotional animal that must continuously be fed by consistently doing good deeds to the general populace.
Our wish is to find a way to silence all the guns and bring everyone on board to start a brand new era for South Sudan. And for us to do that is to make sure that both Kiir Mayar and Riek Machar work together for this sentimental and chaotic period of the transitional government. All the leading South Sudanese politicians whether they go by the name of Kiir Mayar or Riek Machar for that matter don’t give an inch about anyone; they are only in politics to make a name for themselves.
That is the main reason why you still hear them wanting to continue leading their shady and bloody political careers when in reality they should have called it a quit several decades ago. If Kiir refuse to work with Machar, then it is possible that the war might continue unabated with consequential repercussions. A life of a nameless South Sudanese is equal in value to Kiir’s, or Riek’s. After the end of Kiir’s political career; other political figures will rise up and take his place.
And where are these political giants going to come from after his time comes to an end? They are going to come from the very people he allows guns to continuously maim and disfigure year in and year out. It is totally out of place for Kiir to allow his corruptible character to take over his thinking just because his obsession with the presidency won’t allow him to do what is right. At the end of the day, being president is a position like any other occupational career.
The people he pays no heed to our other people’s brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers. They are important people in their own right. Kiir has no divine and ordained right to trample over their God-given right to live a long and bountiful life full of happiness and harmonious relationships. As a matter of fact, he was picked by Dr. John Garang to serve the very needs of the common people he is neglecting right now.
We were lucky not to have drawn into another round of war with the Khartoum right after we signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which culminated and ushered into a fully independent nation from Sudan. Politics doesn’t favor rigid and hard to change political figures. It needs people who are always on their toes righting their wrongs and blending their thinking with better and powerful ideologies that are susceptible to the political erosion of time.
The most conscientious and moral duty of our contemporary era rests squarely on the shoulders of Kiir and Machar to find a meaning way to work together so we can replace the gun mentality with smiles and economic prosperity to help raise our national GDP to an astronomical level. No one knows for sure how things might span out if Machar is not included in this peace process.
Political adversaries must put aside their differences for the sake of the common citizens. Salva Kiir is a devout Christian and in politics, people don’t have the desire to be nice to you all the time; the political game can leave a bitter taste on your mouth. Kiir and Machar must capture the calm political sentimental environment to avoid being drawn into another full-scale war that we all so dread.
The author, Apioth Mayom Apioth, has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Social Sciences from the Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA USA. He is an Admission Counselor from the University of North Dakota. He can be reached at: agutkeu@gmail.com
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