Our Youth Must be Given a Chance to Move the Country Forward: The Case of Biar Ajak
By Apioth Mayom Apioth, North Dakota, USA
Wednesday, August 01, 2018 (PW) —– When a government has everything going well for her; it shouldn’t worry about criticism. Criticism is a toothless biting mouth whose venom become obsolete when the said government/institution is feeding her subjects with euphoric and joyous things to celebrate for their dear lives. The more a government does well for her subjects, the less criticism the government faces in the long run.
Even if there is a throw of criticism here and there, and the political sentiment in the nation is ripe with prosperity and happiness, then any sort of criticism thrown at the government shouldn’t matter, would it? I ask the government and the leading security agencies to release Peter Biar Ajak from the jaws of injustice labeled against him. We have to start a brand new era of respecting the views of other people that may be different from us!!! The time is ripe to embark on that journey now!!!
No matter how brilliant and bright Peter Biar Ajak is in charting a brand new path for our people to be the sole custodians of their rights and freedoms; it is hard to see how his efforts are going to translate into real substantial results. Salva Kiir is beginning to open up to work with different political organizations, but we are not so certain about how things are going to span out in the long run.
The recent $16 million loot that was scandalously distributed among 400 MPs is a prime example of how bleak our future may look going forward. Our people are going hungry and civil servants in various ministerial departments are anxiously waiting for their salaries to come their way since the beginning of the year.
And meanwhile, since 2016, food rations in refugee camps such as Kakuma have been halved and United Nations agencies have started asking our refugees to provide for their secondary schools’ fees. The food rations are not enough and thousands of our school-going age citizens are trapped in an environment where they won’t learn the skills they need to succeed in life.
The MPs had no business whatsoever to have pocketed the proceeds that belonged to all of us. The life of a common citizen in sub-Saharan Africa is always a rollercoaster and a treacherous ride to withstand! Here it is a tumultuous and fragile nation that is badly asking for rebuilding and our very own MPs are thinking of buying cars in the midst of a catastrophic storm!
It is possible that Salva Kiir wishes to stay in power for the long haul, and how he is going to achieve that feat is easy to guess. When the Transitional Period come around, the elections are probably going to be rigged or a constitution may be amended to expand Kiir’s grip on power.
And when that happens, corruption will keep on eating its way into the social fabric of South Sudanese society and the more time corruption continues to linger in our nation, the more time it will take us to kick it to the curb going into the future.
Daniel Arap Moi rode the Kenyan presidential seat for 24 long years, and by the time he was forcefully pushed out by NARC in 2002, corruption was a mainstay in Kenyan society. So every time a Kenyan General Elections come around, corrupt political aspirants hire cartels that were previously used by other like-minded corrupt politicians in the Moi’s era.
Corruption channels are there for those who have the cash to propel themselves to the State House in Kenya, just like how Uhuru Kenyatta accomplished that feat in the last two Kenyan General Elections, and William Ruto is currently running around like a mad dog from coast to coast campaigning for development when he is actually one of the major looters of the Kenyan development resources.
William Ruto loves to hand out his wealth to churches instead of channeling his wealth to potentially profitable enterprises that may create more jobs for the unemployed youth of Kenya. The private sector is one of the major economic backbones that put many nation-states on the bright path to garnering high GDP output.
Peter Biar was at the forefront of many South Sudanese youth organizations such as the Red Army Foundation and the South Sudan Young Leaders Forum (SSYLF). It is one thing to empower the youth and it is another thing altogether to put the youth to work on the projects they were slated to do.
The political climate in South Sudan is not healthy enough for our youthful leaders from the Red Army Foundation and South Sudan Young Leaders Forum to cater to the needs of South Sudanese populace that are yearning for a change so they can start to tend to their livelihoods. Abiy Ahmed Ali, the current Prime Minister of Ethiopia is 41 years old; he is only 6 years older than Peter Biar.
A lot of our very own South Sudanese’s Lost Boys of Sudan are in the same age group as Abiy Ali, and none of them is neither a Vice President nor a Minister of Finance and Economic Planning. This youthful Ethiopian Prime Minister has transformed a nation that was starting to tear itself apart from ethnic chauvinism to the one that is beginning to have a higher hope of a better tomorrow.
Abiy Ahmed Ali will be up for the Nobel Peace Prize sooner rather than later if he keeps on doing great deeds! For every Peter Biar and Abiy Ahmed, there is another evil corrupt politician in the fold of William Ruto.
William Ruto knew he wanted to go into politics from the start, so he amassed much wealth that he could possibly put his hands on; the rumor on the street is that he became so wealthy in such a short time because his means of how he garnered his wealth were questionable at best. “You must be the change you wish to see in the world” (Mahatma Gandhi). For every South Sudanese who wishes to make a difference in her people’s lives, there is another demonic fraudster who sees the worst in her people.
In addition, we live in a tumultuous and fragile part of the world where just about anyone can become the president through dubious means and still manages to stay in power for over three decades. Our youthful political aspirants may age into oblivion while waiting for their chance to come by, because through constitutional amendments and election rigging their chance to make a greater impact in their people’s lives may never come by.
Our youth make up the greatest portion of our population, which accumulates to about 73% of the overall total residential dwellers. Their needs are fundamentally relevant to be align with the developmental projects of our nation, because they are the seeds that will remain in our place once it is time for the older generation to move to another universal dimension.
Contemporary youthful population also tends to be more tolerant toward diverse ethnic cultures and opinionated views, which come through high literacy rate and having been exposed to people from all walks of life and varied international democratic institutions that uphold all human rights in high regards.
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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