Why South Sudan must revert to unitary system opposed to federalism
By Isaiah Abraham
March 7, 2012 — The Republic of South Sudan (RSS) like any other newly created country in any other part of the world is grappling as to what system of governance to adapt and why. Since its independence few months ago, the country has formed a constitutional writing body. A highly touted team headed by a law professor has wasted no time, but embarked on a mission of soliciting ideas internally and from different part of globe. Couples of days ago, a renowned Kenyan professor (Professor Yal Phal Ghai) well vested in this field had lectured to the Committee Members about challenges facing the process and tips on what they should be doing in there.
There has been some furor of activities and wild schedules by the same team; however, people have started to raise questions as to why the team has kept this important exercise in secrecy. There is no forums for the public to debate things more constructively.
There is what is known here as Transitional Constitution of the Republic South Sudan in which ashes people are trying to either build from it or do away with it altogether. The problem again in this part of the world, the employer has shown more than once that everything must be done on his/their dictating terms, a worrying trend indeed. Generally, the ruling party in the South will love to have its interests written more expansively on the expense of objectivity or what doesn’t work.
Someone must allow us to play on the level ground. We must be players in this constitution if we truly plan to have a meaningful country where each of our members shall feel part of the whole. The constitution this country wants must be inclusive, participatory and democratic, unless we build on a document that shall be a source of an ending crisis. Bad legal matters are proven deadly. Some countries in fact keep on amending their constitutions every time, to accommodate new realities facing them. In our context we got to do away with some poor jurisprudence foundation, they will never helped matters but worsen our socio-economic and political situations.
Given experiences from our situation in the past seven years, we must pause and see whether there is a need to continue with our presence laws or expunge some flawed clauses in their total or in pieces. The latter should be the way forward. People aren’t prepare to have another trouble political circumstance where issues to do with stability, peace, development and unity are endangered. In my best judgement, the Transitional Constitution isn’t that entirely bad; the issue is the unsettled status of unitary or federal arrangements in our system.
Somewhere we find our system favouring federalism or whatever we are using now, and at some point, this is where we have unknowingly or knowingly mess things up. We must jump out from the fire before things become nasty. I see our current federalism fragile and source of crisis and this is how: federalism yeah could be good due to its relevance to specific needs of the local people, and it encourages creativity and innovation. But the same system (Federalism) is found out to be complicated and confused, expensive, duplicative, and anti unity. Sometime under federalism, corruption is difficult to detect as there are many layers of governments. It doesn’t eliminate poverty.
On the big matters of unity and harmony, federalism puts things asunder. In Juba few days ago, over six people were killed over land disputes, and the killer (s) is/are at large. The reason being that the security forces were inclined, partial and indifference. Different security agencies at different levels couldn’t handle things in this situation and there a security embarrassment and fiasco!
Our people need to bond together and unfortunately this is not the case at the moment. We are building a false and fluid system where efforts are virtually wasted with regions stubbornly ganging up against the central government. About development, nothing can help an ordinary Southerner at the remote villages due to too much bureaucracy. I have seen some states as countries within a country, with nothing to connect them to the central government. Central Equatoria State is a case in point, where the government operates independently as if this state is not legally binds to the national government. They have funny laws, and in due time, they will throw surprises. In fact no proper scrutiny of legal jargons from states constitutions or by laws.
Upper Nile and Western Bahr El Ghazal governors have approached (entered in fact) into international arrangement/agreements with some foreign governments with little or no knowledge to the Central Government in Juba. The former was in Ethiopia and then China and inked some deals there, while Governor Rizig Zechariah Hassan was in Singapore last year with ambitious projects that should have been undertaken by the national government. Why do you make of these adventures.
Socially we down and soon it is going to be very difficult to heal the scars cause by social inbalance and strife. Southerners are now classified by their states of origins and this wasn’t the case in 1972 during Uncle Joseph Lagu Yanga. Dr. John Garang meant well, though the card of ‘people managing their lands’ was misinterpreted and abuse. I thought it was a policy made to act as a deterrent to Arabs; why is it that our current leadership hangs on this terrible and unstable system? Isn’t the Nigeria federalism situation an alarm to make us caution when applying federalism. What is in the minds of these people who are craving for federalism, what do they want something the central and unity government couldn’t do
Economically, federalism hurts poor states and most of the time, it encourages unnecessary competition and selfishness. In another word, it breeds inequality and we don’t want it happen in our land. Some states are rich while others could be left behind. We must distribution the national cakes equally to all irrespective of whether the oil or what other national resource is discovered where.
Therefore, it is my little proposals that we return our system to unitary, but keep counties under Districts Administration, so to run away from many mouths of politicians the government must feed each day. We need one another in development, and balance is missed at the moment. Our unity is in jeopardy. Some states have high level of skilled manpower while others is crying for brains, why not discriminate Southerners during employment offers? Federalism is good in rich countries, not in the poor countries such as ours.
Majority of world countries are unitary, except 25 among them the United States of America, Canada, Australia, India, Mexico, Brazil among others. Unitary is enduring, as it fosters great stability and unity. I must repeat myself: federalism is a troubled infused system where several local governments can cause more rivalry and problems to the national government. It is good only when the society is educated and wealthy. Law makers hence are asked to throw away federalism like system in our land. They must help the people of South Sudan achieve more.
In states headquarters, we can only have District Commissioners, civil servants drawn from anywhere in our land due to their merits. Districts will have their representatives in the National Assembly, where issues can easily be tracked, and services provided with less political complication. This is just one bad piece of the law or governance arrangement this little author wants change, others are also there.
Isaiah Abraham lives in Juba; he’s on [email protected]