S. Sudan’s ruling SPLM devising anti-corruption strategy

April 5, 2015 (JUBA) – The leadership of South Sudan’s ruling party (SPLM) says it is devising strategies to help the government combat corruption to steer forward the country, allowing delivery of services as it pursues peace with the armed opposition groups..

Mark Nyipuoc, a member of the party’s political bureau, said the leadership was now determined than ever before to devise strategies and tactics to combat corruption. The political bureau is the party’s highest decision making organ.

“The house [parliament] will also not allow leniency in a push to clean up all the public institutions from rampant fraud that he and other leaders say threatens the party’s decades-long grip on power,” the senior official told Sudan Tribune on Sunday.

Nyipuoc, a former deputy speaker of the national assembly, further said both the legislature and the executive in collaboration with the judiciary and law enforcement agents have agreed to pursue what he described as both “tigers” and “flies” so as to cleanse the party, government and other state machineries.

He said the country’s anti-graft campaign would ensnare a number of senior figures, both the South Sudanese ruling party as well as the current government.

However, critics are sceptical about how the leadership, which has resisted introducing reforms, would live up to its own pledges. Many, for instance, cited failure by president Salva Kiir to expose the 75 South Sudanese officials he wrote letters to in 2012.

(ST)