Al-Bashir fires Abyei Chief Administrator

January 7, 2010 (JUBA/KHARTOUM) – The Abyei Chief Administrator, Brig. Gen. Arop Moyak, has been replaced by President Omer Hassan Al-Bashir allegedly over the outgoing administrator’s differences with Deng Arop Kuol.

In a presidential decree effective 30 December 2009, Al-Bashir appointed Deng Arop Kuol himself as the new administrator of the contested oil-rich region located between Northern and Southern Sudan.

President Al-Bashir also dismissed five members of the Abyei executive council, which serves as the cabinet for the region. With the departure of this mainly SPLM group, the deputy chief administrator Rahma Abdel Rahaman is left with two others from the NCP.

Arop Moyak just last year had replaced Edward Lino in Abyei in 2009 following President Al-Bashir’s discontent with the latter’s administration. The change came just over a week after the passing of the Abyei referendum law by the national parliament amid protest by the nomadic Messeriya tribe in the area who still call on Bashir not to sign it into law.

It also follows the emergence of internal political differences within the cabinet of the outgoing administration shortly after the arrest of two officials from departments of finance and physical infrastructure over financial scandal allegations and defiance of administrative instructions.

Local chiefs in the wake of this scandal tried to settle misunderstandings but their reconciliatory attempts were fiercely resisted by area officials who gathered supports from intellectuals in the area. The officials accused the chiefs of having been biased in their reconciliation attempts and that they maintained allegiance to chief administrator without addressing the roots cause of the differences.

Similarly, Government of South Sudan President Salva Kiir Mayardit in Juba also held several meetings advising officials to reconcile their differences and resume working together till elections. These attempts, however, failed to address the matter prompting SPLM leadership to resort to dismissal of the whole cabinet as an alternative.

Even so, the circumstances of what exactly prompted the change in the administration are not entirely clear.

Chol Bar, one of the youth leaders in Abyei, said in an interview that the whole SPLM team headed by Arop Mayak is dismissed and he welcomed the development. “They have now joined us on the streets of Abyei as ordinary citizens. It is solved; let them go,” he said claiming that the erstwhile chief administrator had done nothing since appointed in August 2008.

The ousted chief administrator “hardly stayed in the area to acquaint himself with challenges facing the local population” stated the youth leader. “He only used to come to Abyei as a visitor. He spent much of his time between Juba, Khartoum and eastern African countries.”

“This time, Abyei people need leaders whose children are within the area in reference to Abyei. Not those whose children live abroad. This was why the previous administration did not deliver to the expectation of the locals because their children are not part of the challenges facing local people,” he commented.

The Abyei region is under the custody of the Presidency in Khartoum, in accordance with the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), until the region’s population decides on its political fate in the January 2011 referendum to either join the South or remain in the North.

(ST)

Reporting by James Gatdet Dak in Juba and Ngor Arol Garang in Khartoum