An Open Letter to President Kiir: You have Failed our Country and your own community
President Kiir's Bahr el Ghazal tour, Feb 2019
OPEN LETTER TO HIS EXCELLENCY PRESIDENT SALVA KIIR MAYARDIT
Your Excellency,
Sunday, September 05, 2021 (PW) — I am writing to you not just as a concerned citizen but also as somebody who comes from your community. That means whatever I am going to mention here is from my honest observation and not from the oppositionist point of view. I love you both, my president and my nation. That is why I am going to be open about what is spoiling both names.
First and foremost, I am an international NGO worker, one of the few lucky South Sudanese to get into the humanitarian ranks and files while still leaning towards the betterment of my people and nation. Therefore, my account is based on what I have seen and heard from around J1 here and outside of the country, especially Europe and America that I frequent on my workshops and other official trips.
Mr. President, sir, is Your Excellency, aware that our national image is soiled not only because of the enemies’ actions but also because of your government’s self-infliction on diplomatic blunders? On top of these is the way our embassies are in an embarrassing situation: financially bankrupt and starved of qualified diplomats.
For example, my interactions with various, miserable diplomats on delayed or non-payment of rents and salaries in Europe and the USA can be generously shared with Your Excellency as follows:-
- 2019: 9 months in arrears
- 2020: 11 months
- 2021: 5 months
Just as a few to mention, some embassies have no staffers, for instance just ahead of mission and 2 staff members. Where are the rest? Either they are recalled due to lack of funds or are out there hustling as taxi drivers or deal connectors.
Chanceries or ambassadorial residences and embassies are running months of debts in rents and salary arrears, worse with the local embassy workers from the host countries, who do not and would not understand why South Sudan is not paying their salaries and they flowing oil and other resources.
Your Excellency, this is true to the best of my knowledge. I have witnessed with my naked eyes a tattered flag flying on the building of one of our embassies in Europe. The ambassadors’ cars and residences lack flags because they cannot afford to re-supply the Mission!
Back in Juba here, you have assigned ambassadors and diplomats through your public decrees but are still holed up in the ministry just because they cannot afford to travel to their duty stations to which you have assigned and did farewell ceremony to them. For a people’s representative in a foreign country (ambassador) to lack a car for official duties is nothing short of national embarrassment.
Some diplomats are complaining of gross neglect by the headquarters, especially the diplomatic fact that ambassadors are directly reporting to you as they are your representatives (small presidents) in those countries. Maybe there is a clique that is choking the diplomatic spaces around your office, sir.
I need to repeat this, Mr. President, South Sudan embassies and missions are too broke to meet basic operation costs and hospitality in the day-to-day execution of their duties. At least, I have heard from my sources a great effort of decency in our embassies in the neighborhood, especially in Nairobi, Addis Ababa, and, yes, Washington DC.
Mr. President, the more practical case in point here is that of a very frustrated South Sudanese-European employee that dragged our embassy to the court of law because he was not paid his salary for over 20 months. There are such cases with local employees and second-class diplomats, who suffer in silence due to a lack of space for voicing their grievances.
There is yet another glaring cause of our nation’s contempt among the families of nations and shaming among diplomatic corridors: the lack of payment of membership fees to international organizations and ratification of international pacts and trade treaties.
My dear president, for these and other reasons, our country’s image is badly exposed and that may explain why we are despised everywhere. The terrible impact of these diplomatic woes is that your government may not be trusted enough to access loans and other international favors, no wonder UN and US sanctions are mushrooming every now and then. It cannot go without mention that it is such loopholes that the civil action activists, like the PCCA, are exploiting to justify their causes and actions to the international community as well as to the disgruntled citizens.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Your Excellency, as someone who has liberated and loves this country from his heart, may you personally intervene with the following measures:
1- Send your secret fact-finding mission to those countries to verify my claims here.
2- Pay up some urgent rent and arrears, and you may do this with a to 6 months of advanced payment to build the depleted trust and safeguard against another failure for your Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Cooperation to meet the payment deadlines. And the ways to do this:
- Pay from your own J1 safes as I am aware the Presidency has the custody of our national coffers, not the Central Bank, these days.
- Borrow from one of your very wealthy business associates to clear the bills and then pay them back later.
- Divert just 1 cargo of the crude shipment to clear once and for all this national shame in our history.
3- Take any other necessary actions, and, please, do it as promptly as possible to avert more diplomatic uprisings as these are not normal days in your history of the leadership of this country.
Concerned Citizen of South Sudan and Supporter of President Salva Kiir Mayardit
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