SPLM tactics of scaring away voters in southern Sudan

By Dr. James Okuk

March 26, 2010 — These days after having realized that many voters are not on their side, the SPLM leaders and supporters resorted to treacherous tactics of scaring away the people in Southern Sudan, especially in the states and counties where the SPLM popularity was proven to be minimum than expected by the sleeping and incompetent candidates in Juba and other capital towns and villages of the Southern Sudan. Their aim is to see to it that the polling dates on 11th – 13th April 2010 does not find the SPLM-DC’s and independents’ supporters existing in the designated electoral constituencies because their votes are already foreseen to be negative against Salva Kiir and his handpicked candidates with their so-called running mates.

After the surprising support that the majority of Southerners have shown publicly for Dr. Lam Akol Ajawin and his team of Southern political parties and independent candidates because of their sincerity in the path for genuine democratic change, the elections-fevered SPLM leaders and supporters started to move around gossiping and telling the people to leave and go to Northern Sudan or neighboring countries to avoid a bloody war that is coming in April. “Kiir and his group shall never leave the government power even if they fail elections… and Dr. Lam and his team shall never be allowed to sit in government offices in the South if they beat SPLM in the ballot boxes because the bullet boxes shall be commanded to maintain the status quo,” some top leaders and supporters of SPLM have been heard telling the public.

Other bad SPLM elements (accompanied by some indiscipline SPLA soldiers), and who were part of voters’ registrars, have also been seen moving here and there these days threatening the people to throw away their voting cards because in April whoever will be found with such cards in his/her possession shall face a torturing arrest and other punitive measures accorded to traitors by the liberators of the people. Even some of them took away the voters cards from the people they demarcated as non-SPLM supporters. To some extent, so far and so bad, some people have thrown away their voting cards in order to avoid any bad thing befalling them when April arrives. Some of these scared people were heard saying: “Why do I risk getting tortured or killed because of being a voter; to hell with the voting card so that I can live in peace and carry on my daily activities without fear from the SPLA torturers…”

Yes, as far as the survival-rule is concerned, these scared people of Southern are right though their attitude is harmful to the germination of democracy in Southern Sudan at this important early stage. But they are not to blame because theirs is only protection of their dear bones and lives against the SPLM scaremongers and killers of democracy in the South. Something must be done urgently so that the fear is removed from the voters’ hearts before it is too late. Let the SPLM eliminate them and this shall get into history as the sacrifice and public ransom paid for changing from guerrilla dictatorship to civilian democracy.

In the first instant, this evil tactics have been taken lightly but now at this later stage when it has been discovered that the whole fiasco is a fabricated schedule from the above authorities in the South, it has to become a moral duty to diffuse it on an alertive mode. Scaring the people not to vote for their leadership choice is not very different from rigging the elections by filling the ballot boxes with ghost votes. An empty ballot box counted in a constituency with many supporters of a popular political party or an independent candidate is useless and a terrible blow to democracy compared to a filled one by fraudulence, at worst cases. Some of us are even tempted at this moment to say that it is even a lesser evil if the SPLM scaremonger tacticians opt for rigging elections with more ghost names than denying the people to vote in their very constituencies where they have been registered.

Please the scared SPLM leaders and supporters, rig the elections if you found yourself a loser in the democratic transformation path in Southern Sudan, but leave the people alone to enjoy the peace of their settlements. Don’t scare the people away with your lies and threats!!!

Surely, the South Sudan shall fall with failed SPLM leadership because it is not the nature of elephant to fly, and thus it is a waste of time to teach it how to fly. Most of the leaders at the top leadership hierarchy of SPLM today have never passed through school of democracy and have no experience how the game is supposed to be played fairly. That is why the panic has been the ruler of their hearts and minds. Even though they were courageous and gallant fellows on the gun during the war time, yet, the process of democratic transformation has proven them cowards of the people’s power; alas!!!

Fellows who try to hoodwink the public that SPLM is still a child, and thus its dictatorship must be tolerated till further notice in 2011, are playing with the dictates of human civilization in the South. Toleration when tribes are killing each other internally and externally exacerbated by the SPLM bad politics of hegemony, where corruption spree is legitimized shamelessly, is so devastating to be tolerated by a people who want to liberate themselves from former Northern oppressors in order to form their own Southern country in near future.

SPLM bad leadership must go if genuine change has to come in the South Sudan for a better future of a new nation. Five years is enough to evaluate and judge bad leaders from the good ones. The South can do better without necessarily being ruled by the current incompetent president and company who don’t want to quit as they failed badly.

Thus, it is high time for the National Elections Commission (NEC) and international observers, including the United Nations Mission in the Sudan (UNMIS) to note this bad act of emptying the ballot boxes before time in the areas where the SPLM has lost popularity and credibility. Let’s not joke with democracy or mock it because the consequences shall never be desirable even to the very SPLM scaremongers’ tacticians. God save South Sudan from SPLM badness!!!!

*Dr. James Okuk is a Southerner for genuine democratic change in the beloved country-in-the-waiting. He is reachable at [email protected]