Expensive wedding, while millions face severe hunger in South Sudan

by Dickson Gatluak

Dear Comrade, Puot Kang Chol, first and foremost, accept my congratulations and thank you for becoming a man in your own way. As a colleague and friend in the struggle to establish a vibrant nation, today I want to let you know that I have had much respect and regard for you because of your age. You will be a bit unique and different from our older generations in terms of choices, behaviours and actions as you work to correct constraint messed and contemplates serving your country with empathetic love and unravelling leadership as the future seems bright with huge demands for corruption-free leadership.

Comrade, the whole country is in deep crisis and everyone is hungry for food and means to find daily survival notwithstanding the natural disasters which have befallen our beloved region in the past couple of months now.

Making such an expensive marriage appears like you are celebrating the suffering of your own citizens in broad daylight, or you are trying to tell the public that being a minister of Petroleum is where corruption happens. As young as you are, you are the richest man among the older men that see SOUTH SUDAN suffers an economic collapse, serious skyrocketing commodity prices and land grabbing. Could it be because you’re the Minister of the most important Ministry in the whole country?

Let me be a bit harsh with you here; how much did you spend on that show-off of your marriage?  200,000 USD or more? And where did you get such money from? Hon. minister Puot if you are honest enough, please tell the public how much you earn as a minister and your current worth as a minister. Analysing your actions together with those of your fellow ministers in the current government speaks to the magnitude of the current corruption within your Ministry and that of the entire nation.

Asking you hypothetically, what do you think such an amount of money would have done to the lives and livelihoods of the affected citizens supposing you donated it to support them rather than spending it on that single-day marriage or how many soldiers would you have paid assuming you decided to cancel such an expensive marriage and pay monthly salaries of school teachers in Upper Nile who have been without salaries for the last 8 months now? Or even better, with the same amount of money, wouldn’t you have restored Malakal Teaching Hospital to its condition or better before the war?

It is sad to say, but there are currently ongoing wars or conflicts in around three dozen counties of Greater Upper Nile, most of them in the Unity region, Fangak and Lou Nuer Land with 300 to 500 deaths in the current or past months.

Comrade Puot, there was no need for you to brag off like that while we know the very source of the money you are showing us. You have not brought them from your own family’s fortune; did you?

If I were you, I would have kept that lavish marriage of mine behind closed doors, just to avoid the wrong messages it may be sent in a country like ours stricken by war and poverty.