Was South Sudan on the verge of bankrupt?

By Charles B. Kisanga

January 6, 2009 — Recently there are unmistakable signs that the Government of South Sudan may be experiencing an acute shortage of cash to the extent that unthinkable decisions had to be taken.
As usual the government of South Sudan officials do not refer to procedure of running a Government when faced with problems. On top of that they prefer to be secretive like the Maxims Leninist ideology which imparted some SPLM officials during their training in Cuba and Ethiopia in the eighties and nineties.

The sign of the money shortage can be seen with very crude Government orders like the one attributed to Dr. Martin Lomoro, Minster of Parliamentary Affairs ands and Mr. Kuol Athain, Minister of Finance. They were recently quoted of asking all the employees of GoSS and the states to vacate hotels by the next day, the 1st of January 2009. Officials were told to check out of hotels within 24 hours. Now no one can believe a Government can just issue orders like that because the Government bases its decision on vision and long term insight into the running of the country. But GoSS official are renowned for making decision in the night which is supposed to be implemented the next day. To them there is no long term Government planning and programme execution.

The next other move to preserve cash was the action of South Sudan Legislative Assembly Speaker Mr James Wani Igga who issued an order stopping the end of year bonuses paid to MPs. But his head of committees were not happy with such a decision and proceeded to organise their own bonus payments and now the Speaker is trying to persecute his own officials of South Sudan Legislative Assembly for paying themselves bonus. Speaker Hon Wani Igga is so desperate for the cash that he has ordered the paid officials to repay back the money. Can any of them really afford to pay back? Perhaps only those who might have amassed to themselves some dollars into foreign accounts can ask their foreign banks to remit them the said mount otherwise with Christmas expanses, it will be impossible for some to find the cash to refund the money. Further more the official who was forced to pay these MPs is the one being punished as the scapegoat as he has been dismissed with immediate effect.

Such drastic and impossible and laughable measures by GoSS officials can only mean one thing- acute shortage of cash Although the decision to reduce hotel and travel spending by GoSS had been made from November and through December the act of telling officials to vacate hotels by next morning seemed to be unprecedented and a desperate measure for cash so much that GoSS is taking the risk of alienating some of their own officials who will be unhappy about the mistreatment. We can see further signs of desperation from the stalling the Parliamentary debate concerning this year’s budget which has hit problems with boycott over the bonuses payments to parliamentary committee heads as mentioned above and subsequent threat by some MPs to remove the Speaker himself and other officials, as pointed out in the news by Sudan Tribune.

“On the other hand some disappointed present MPs angrily expressed their disappointment over the postponement and demanded removal of the specialized committee together with the Speaker whom they accused of being overdue in offices and promised to issue statements tomorrow .-Sudan Tribune”.

Hence it looks like the fourth anniversary of the CPA is proving to be a rough one for GoSS again and they are facing the prospects of the Government accounts having no cent left after the celebrations of the CPA in Malakal. It would be easy for any country based on a democratic system to come clean during such crises and tell the world the truth that we they are almost bankrupt because of the corruption and mismanagement and falling oil process but GoSS officials are s trying to hide the truth. Already many workers never got any pay even for Christmas and many more are missing salaries for months. December was the end of the financial year and already for the last three months we have witnessed the declining oil prices (today selling at $46.50) which affect the money remitted to GoSS by Sudan Government in Khartoum . It is now known that 90% of the budget from last year was all used to pay salaries and that was not even enough as not all the labour force received the pay.

The truth is after GoSS sues 90 % of its budget on salaries we can estimate the other 10 % has been stolen via corruption like the case of Steven Baak carrying $3 million to UK . How many officials had succeeded in carrying amounts such as 3 million abroad? If 100 GoSS officials or more succeeded then we are taking about may be $300 million eaten in one year. That leaves the masses of South Sudan with almost zero dollars for services. A country allotting zero amounts for its public service is in fact bankrupt already. But the word bankrupt will be too hard for GoSS to say and as such they are now are resorting to impossible measures. Worst of all we have a GoSS saying they dedicated $21 million to CPA celebrations in Malakal while in he same year the money for services to the people is nil. You can only spend that big amount on CPA anniversary celebrations if the masses are enjoying a peace dividend in terms of security and services. But as far as the world knows the services and security are lacking. For insecurity one cannot go far to see how people suffer all over the South Sudan . Just three days ago four innocent young Equatorians were short dead during New Year’s night in Juba by so called unidentified gunmen. Well just a few days earlier I had written any article about: “The need for change in South Sudan in 2009”, in which I enumerated the insecurity by rogue SPLA elements out of control but because some people do not take my words serious enough then the consequence is continued death as people are misled to believe everything is fine until it reaches you.

Ordering South Sudan employees to leave hotels in such a hurry and with such draconian measures involving the unruly SPLA security organs is inhuman and amounts to mistreatment of workers as if they have no right as employees. You have to give people enough time to make alternative arrangements and you cannot just kick them out like if they are criminals being thrown out of jail because of overcrowding and as if it was their mistakes to be housed in hotels in the first place. What if an officials refuses to leave because he/she no where to go; will he/she be shot dead also by the security organs tasked with carrying out the order?

The best GoSS can do is to appeal for help and give reasonable time for officials who went to hotels because of GoSS mistakes and not via their mistakes to leave amicably after securing alternative arrangements for their accommodation. People have been saying for sometimes now GoSS was spending too much money on hotels but they ignored the concerns as though their fountain of money from Khartoum will never run dry, even though their ability to raise any money via local taxes is nil due to lack of bills and corrupt officials eat away any illegal taxes collected any way. On the other hand the it was good to put employees in hotels since of course many of these those hotels such as Home and Away, South Sudan Hotel, Juba Raha etc are owned by Senior SPLM officials and they need to suck all the money from their own Government via accommodating their own officials in their private owned hotels.

Judging from all these events and episodes in GoSS it is clear the Government has lost its balance and it is just tiptoeing to survive even how much it is strapped of cash. However in a truly democratic system no Government with so many mistakes and failures could even afford to survive for a day in atmosphere of economic collapse, corruption, misrule and mismanagement. But this is Southern Sudan and it was at war with the North for 22 years and the civil societies and the population can be excused for not being able to challenge a failed Government at least for now.

Eng. Kisanga is a former SPLM NLC member who lives and works in exile in UK as Consultant Engineer. He is also chairman of Western Equatoria Azande Community world wide Organisation.
He can be reached on [email protected]