Lead or Be Led Mr President Kiir: Proposed Reforms for Political Stability and Economic Prosperity in South Sudan

By Mamer Peter Chiruei, Juba, South Sudan

Sunday, January 23, 2022 (PW) — The only way to reform is to dismantle the political logjam and realign the South Sudan political process into the election. This process, although painfully slow and uncertain, is well underway and taking place. If President Kiir is to maintain his legacy, it is the only way to test voters’ re-affirmation and get rid of tribal middlemen who have surrounded him and the South Sudanese political process for nearly two decades.

Since the unexpected demise of Dr John Garang and the assumption of the SPLM top political helm by General Kiir Mayardit in 2005, South Sudan has been awaiting the arrival, deus ex machina, of a social compact between the SPLM party and its political actors in the former Sudanese government to finally create the growth and equal opportunities desperately needed by South Sudanese people to change the course of the NIF government that they fought against for 21 years.

But is such a social compact possible? And is it the right solution to unlocking economic and political reform in South Sudan?

First, one needs to consider who is sitting around that table where such a discussion takes place within the J1 basement. It should be remembered that the presidential security advisor, Tut Gatluak Manime, former Finance Minister Athian Diing, Electricity Minister Dhieu Mathok, Foreign Affairs minister Mayiik Ayii, Dr Chol Deng Abel Nilepet, managing director, and invisible tribal advisors by the names of Dr Bona Mawal Madut, Dr Aldo Ajou Deng Akuei, Unity State Governor Dr Baping Monytuil, and Northern Bar el Gazel governor Tong Aken, vice president al hajji Abdel Bagi Ayii Akol have something in common — they are all former National Islamic Front diehard sympathizers.

After 17 good years in power, there is reasonable ground to believe that there are no doubt shades of difference in policy between, say, SPLM high command led by president Kiir himself and NIF elites led by Tutkew Gatluak. The current government bench combined is hardly a hotbed of economic and political reform any time soon.

The National Islamic Front opportunists are dead set against anything that does not measure up to their now jaded Islamic ideologies, which they used to rule Sudan for decades. The crushingly obvious need for the government of national unity to open its current individualized mining and agricultural sectors and the transition from oil dependency to non-oil revenue collection to fund government expenditures will likely have to be done without their active consent and in spite of their running policy interference.

As the security advisor and ministers in the government’s economic cluster came from the National Islamic Front tradition of deception, killing and harassment of opponents, they continue fighting factional battles with some of the high commands in the Kiir camp who have questioned some of the status quo as aired by Miraya FM Mac Samuel with General Kuol Manyang Juuk complaining of their having failed the South Sudanese people. The National Islamic Front faction with president Kiir Mayardit remains unwilling to lose allies to the left led by Mama Rebecca Garang, whom they see as the shredder of their activities and the only uniting figure within the government should she hold political weight any time soon.

Non-oil revenue finds itself isolated and bereft of influence as this politics of factionalism dance of the fractured liberation movement plays itself out in an ill-fitting but still constraining ideological kimono. The belief that bold and decisive reforms will emerge from a keen exchange of ideas among social compact partners of the Kiir Mayardit faction and the Riek Machar faction is a delusion. Even if such a plan were to emerge, it would still have to make its way through the factional threshing machine that is stationed in J1 and SPLM House and then find an executive willing — never mind able — to implement it. A tall, nay, impossible order.

The only road to reform by President Kiir is to break the political logjam, realign the South Sudan political process to re-affirmation of trust through the election and get rid of the tribal middlemen who have surrounded him and South Sudanese political reform for nearly two decades. This process, although painfully slow and uncertain, is well underway as per the 2018 Revitalized Agreement for the Resolution of Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan. That agreement, if well understood by all parties, is the only cure for South Sudanese political and economic problems. What a good agreement it is for my people!

The SPLM faction led by President Salva Kiir and NIF elites needs to reach the realization that there are electoral consequences for its failure to lead. Those who cynically doubt the power of voting need only look at the 2002 Kenyan election of KANU against its own reformists led by former president Mwai Kibaki versus Uhuru Kenyatta, the handpicked candidate of Daniel Torotich Arap Moi KANU miserably lost to the reformist faction and saw its support plummet in response to President Arap Moi iron fist rules and failure to go by the people’s demand for real change and provide opportunities to the Kenyan people’s demand. That is how democracy disciplines idle parties that live in the past with disregard to the social protection of their citizens.

The party, for almost two decades, a feckless and fawning defender of unjustified wars, inadequacies, saw with horror the prospect of electoral loss in the next national election and the disappearance of the many benefits of office. The spine, gathering dust in the SPLM House and J1basement, was found and painfully reinserted into its shapeless politics in 2010. By December 2013, the Riek Machar faction was out during the wish hunt dissolution of the entire government of South Sudan and the party ran into factionalism that brought in the National Islamic Front and Jieng Council of Elders as the substitutes for the breakaway faction of Riek Machar and political detainees to fill the vacuum, as said by Aldo Ajou Deng Akuei in his famous TV interviews, referring to themselves as an alternative for the leadership after SPLM failure.

By 2016, the national security laws were initiated by Jieng councils of elders and the National Islamic Front to reciprocate what they have been doing in Khartoum by arresting, detaining, and without bail so that they could contain discontented citizens looking for quality life after a long decade of suffering under the authority of Arab dominated Islamic politics. The whole leadership of SPLM cadres was replaced through their recommendation, and hardly a day went by without condemnation of unknown gunmen.

Hundreds of disappearances and detentions started, and able citizens like Deng Athuai Monywiir and Dr Jok Madut Jok began to evacuate the country for fear of their dear lives escaping the grand return of the bitterly fought Islamic movement to South Sudan, infiltrating the mighty liberation party through their watchful eyes.

It is not a great leap of logic to see that the only thing that will shift the South Sudanese government into finally stopping the political slide and fixing the economy is a similar threat to its power, which either results in a new governing coalition with bitter rival SPLM in opposition or opens room for the reform-minded SPLM cadres like Nhial Deng Nhial, Mabior John Garang, and Atem Garang Kuek, to mention but a few, in the next general election.

Such a moment is arriving sooner than the complacent SPLM faction leadership led by the president and his cohorts would like to admit and may manifest itself in a stay-away or protest vote in the national election should there be one called sooner than December 2022 as stipulated in the revitalized agreement. The party has essentially admitted that it has failed to govern at the local level by using tribal politics and appeal to get support along a tribal line through thirty-two and twenty-two states that were dissolved miserably without any salaries for most of their staff, forget about the services or any intention they were formed with. Not many will be fooled, I tell you.

There is, of course, another, simpler solution to the SPLM’s problems. 

By doing that, he would save himself from the burden of a political witch-hunt by his opponent and be appreciated by South Sudanese for handing over power peacefully. Though there will be intense pressure on him to remain, especially from top bureaucrats who fear that their influence and their jobs may be at risk once he leaves, he will, in the process, take much of the progressive leadership with him once he has power.

Such reform processes are not about pleasing constituencies, they are about realignment and a fresh start, as was done by Ustaz Julius Nyerere of Tanzania when he handed over the party to the next leader in an uninformed move to appease his cliques. Exercising leadership does not just consume political capital, but also creates fresh leverage for the new beginning.

Such a pivot to reform would have to identify the low-hanging fruit — and there is plenty of it even if some of it has begun to spoil — and getting on with changing the way things are done with the emphasis on “done” will be the best solution for our liberation party that has been leveled as a distractor of progressive politics by the majority of South Sudanese and indeed the international community.

It enforces tough labour laws on United Nations agencies and corporate companies to employ locals with decent salaries, tightens working permits for foreign workers, and regulates foreign investment for the public interest. It might not please neighbouring countries that use President Kiir Mayardit’s administration to create jobs for their citizens while South Sudanese graduates are packed in camps to survive the food ratios of the United Nations, but it will finally send a signal to the excluded youth that they are on the agenda and that the much-promised “better life” as embedded in the SPLM logo as justice, equality, and prosperity for all is more than rhetoric to be achieved.

The demilitarization of the national customs service to professional tax collection agents under national revenue authority will revitalize the rise of non-oil-revenue collections to settle the budget deficit that the government of South Sudan has been facing for years.

Privatization of Nile Petroleum Company with the government taking the lead shares to settle the issue of the foreign-dominated gas industry could create more jobs and save money for the government that has been losing income revenues through over employment in the Nile Petroleum Company for years due to lack of transference in the agency.

If President Kiir Mayardit misses this leadership moment, he will continue to wade through the treacle of factionalism until the party and South Sudanese people finally engulf him — or eject him from his political niche. Neither of these outcomes will cause him to be well remembered, for the final goal of a statesman.

Lead or be led? This is President Salva Kiir Mayardit choice and his legacy. Ku thok jamdie!!!

Mamer Peter lives in Juba, South Sudan, and is a practising accountant, can be reached at mamerpciruei@gmail.com

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