SPLM must endorse democratic principles

By Charles B. Kisanga

June 22, 2009 — The Sudan Comprehensive Agreement (the CPA) was a novel agreement that was greeted with enthusiasm and jubilations among the South Sudanese population as well as the whole population of Sudan. According to late hero Dr. John Garang de Mabior the agreement marked a turning point in the just struggle of the people of Sudan against neo-colonialism and marginalisation. It was an exceptional agreement with many guarantees and many of the Sudanese masses agreed with him. Dr, John Garang spoke of great limp in the development and modernisation of South Sudan which could have been unprecedented in the post-colonial Africa.

Unfortunately the leader died under mysterious tragic accident just few weeks after taking office as 1st Vice President of the Sudan and President of the Government of Southern Sudan and Commander in Chief of the SPLA and Chairman of the SPLM. He was succeeded by Lt General Salva Kiir Mayardit amid potential struggle for leadership and when the Government was formed it was met with scepticism by many as it was a government of appeasement meant to accommodate people of varying interests rather than being based on efficient and competency.

The scepticism soon manifested itself as things began t o go wrong from day one: Insecurity never improved to better; corruption began to grow by the day as all the money which went to Southern Sudan were just eaten among cronies. Stories of SPLM members carrying millions of dollars in suitcases, coffins, and in refrigerators were everywhere. The first $60 million given by Khartoum NCP Government to SPLM in 2005 was quickly embezzled as SPLM leaders divided it as loot among themselves and hoping that no word of the money would come out. They were soon to proven wrong when President Al Bashir exposed them during anniversary celebrations speeches in Juba in 2007. Corruption continued regardless of that so that even in foreign counties some SPLM members were caught with huge sums of money at different destinations. In Juba the tribal corrupt system manifested itself by building very expensive luxury hotels and running business worth billions of dollars by some people who had no penny just a few months earlier.

No democracy in Southern Sudan

The CPA was a great agreement in words and paper which was supposed to deal away with marginalisation and under-development for good. To make sure that marginalization does not recur in Sudan inclusion was greatly talked of in the CPA. It was always stipulated that the post CPA government will be very inclusive. But in order to override inclusion and retain marginalisation Lt Gen Salva Kiir went for dictatorship where instead of consulting with grass roots and slowly introduce democratic principles he went for dictatorship whereby he had to handpick and appoint everybody from Commissioner of the county, to state ministers and to GoSS ministers and commission heads and deputies and even members. Lt General Kiir could even appoint and fire bank employees like the recent case of NCB employee who blew whistle on the GoSS Senior officials drawing all the money of NCB via huge loans which were never repaid. In order to undermine democracy for good SPLM chairman Salva Kiir went not for the popular people but the most hated by their people and corrupt people who were handpicked to be appointed over popular candidates. The strategy was simple: If you appoint unpopular Governors and ministers who are disliked by the masses then the Governor or minister would stay royally to the tribal system because the tribal system is their lifeline. The unpopular appointees were also allowed to get away with corruption as a way to make sure that they stay royally to the tribal corrupt system which only favours some ethnic groups without allowing freedom, justice and equality in everything from employment to services and access to services. The failure to introduce democracy and allow equitable distribution of wealth or money was a way to protect tribal based clique government. These practices had negative implications for transition towards democracy and the transformation needed after 22 years of war and neglect of democratic institutions. We know that democracy cannot be imposed overnight because before you just get faced with all new faces and people you never liked for their stand for good governance you need to get to the idea of working with people you may not like but who are popular in their areas. Having failed to introduce democracy gradually while cementing tribal dictatorial corrupt system which had no really opposition in the Southern Sudan, the old the SPLM had now been hit with great panic with the split of SPLM-DC and the panic and fear among so called die hard ranks is unbearable. Some old SPLM leaders showed ignorance about everything with complete disregard to rule of law because it suddenly dawned to them that change is inventible and everybody wants change and the masses may as well vote a party of change soon. Such fear and panic among SPLM so called special members shows that they had never been serious about democratic transformation and it is the sort of behaviour which allows dictators to try to rig elections because one cannot afford to work democratically and the only way to continue to claim absolute leadership is by rigging election so that the unpopular candidates who owes their lifeline and allegiance to the corrupt system are brought back.. The panic stricken so called special SPLM members have now tried all means to undermine SPLM-DC on imaginary grounds like claim that abbreviation and name SPLM belongs to one group of people in South Sudan and not Northerners can even claim it and with old claim that some people are more SPLM than others. Lt Gen. Salva Kiir who is used to be honoured like monarchy thought even his words are above the law and no one else can call their party SPLM-something. Lt Gen Kiir you must accept the fact that all the Sudanese are children of late Dr. John Garang and all have the right to anything he made or created for the purpose of liberating old Sudan into new Sudan. Instead of dwelling on trivial things like name which have no bases in law and political institutions old SPLM have to face to the fact of democracy and allowing political freedom to exist in the Southern Sudan so that a true free and fair Elections can take place soon in 2010. There should be no threats against anybody or any group of people or parties. Lt General Salva Kiir continues to tarnish the image of the SPLM through the widely circulated news that his SPLM is sending hit squads to Khartoum against the SPLM-Democratic Change leadership. If you want to have a good image you should talk about your achievement and asking people to vote SPLM back in for their achievement. SPLM threat of killing opposition politicians is barbaric and has no place in the true SPLM now in the form of SPLM-DC. SPLM chairman Salva Kiir threats is not against individuals but against the people of Sudan because he wants to undermine democracy for them so that his failed system will continue to bully the people of Southern Sudan and the whole Sudan to allow tribal and corrupt elements to continue to loot the resources of the country for years to come.

Result of a Failed System

SPLM/GoSS big failures in the South Sudan resulted in the situation where there is no job security for South Sudanese be they civil servants or SPLA because all of their salaries had been eaten and delayed and there is no way for many to know how they are going to be feeding their family tomorrow while the fat cats of GoSS/SPLM had millions of dollars of people’s money stashed away in foreign banks. Doctors and teachers are all on strike these days in many towns across Southern Sudan. The news is always the same: the y had not been paid for almost seven months. Also those who got paid had the salaries reduced to 70% or so. Faced with total bankrupt the GoSS implemented salary reductions arbitrarily so that people never know what they may earn next month.

No major development projects ever kicked off except private buildings build by corrupt elements and foreign business. The schools and the hospitals have all the same bullet scars which were there during the signing ceremony of CPA in 2005 or the children and health workers are under trees with nothing built to replace destroyed building.

For South Sudan the insecurity mean that a bullet could catch anybody anywhere any time and people had to take extra care to survive the day to day. Even Juba could not be spared as Mundari continue to battle with Bari in order to settle unknown political scores.
In the North the SPLM failed miserably without a leader. The idea that the popularity of party depends on its leaders never occurred to the SPLM and because of lack of leadership, SPLM was in retreat as SPLM chairman Salva Kiir failed to appeal as a leader to Northerners and SPLM was almost collapsing and disappearing completely because after the death of Dr. John Garang SPLM in north could not be attached yet to any leader from the South who knew how to appeal to the broad spectrum of the people and how to solve the marginalisation issue which plagued many Sudan regions in the past and present.

The Need for Change

The SPLM led GoSS instituted a unique system, which cannot be called a government, perhaps the only of it’s in the world because the sort of corruption, tribalism, nepotism and marginalisation is very unique from those found elsewhere. The leader Lt Gen Salva Kiir made it a point to appoint weak and unpopular people who could be yes people and who cannot raise any finger against all the corruption and malpractices done by GoSS. Example of weak people running offices recently showed itself via weakness of South Sudan Legislature Assembly leader. The speaker of the Southern Sudan Legislature Assembly instead of being somebody who could be neutral to regulate the Government became weak party of the GoSS itself. Hon Wani Igga ignorance on norm of corruption manifested itself last time when he went to the Church to preach that people who did corruption did so because many of their relatives went to stay with them without energising in cultivation and so such GoSS officials had to embezzle money to look after their extended family. Honourable Mr Speaker, ‘the people who looted the money of Southern Sudan did so for greediness and they have nothing to do with visitors to their homes’. After all how many SPLM/GoSS leaders are any way engaged in cultivation that they can take their relatives to go to do likewise? These people are engaged in looting money and taking it to buy luxury houses in Khartoum, in Kampala, in Nairobi, in Europe, in America and in Australia. Cultivation is the last thing on their minds.

The more than $6 billion of South Sudan money which has been squandered by GoSS/SPLM had more to do with greedy and tribalism and hegemony other than anything else. Also tribal leaders wanted to punish others by allowing their kinsmen to take all the money they wanted so that they appear superior to the rest. Millions of dollars in cash had been handed out by the GoSS reserved tribal ministry of Finance where ministers splashed out a lot of cash on ethnic bases with false claims of loans and start-up funds for business and on other claims. As long as one were from that ethnic group one could go there and claim any amount. All these brought the coffers of GoSS to nil.

With tribalism and squander of money going on in Juba it was only a matter of time before the anger goes wild with tribe turning against tribe and neighbour turning against neighbour. Also morale and patriotism of the SPLA soldiers disappeared as all their salaries had been eaten. With no one to fight for the nation the LRA ravaged Western Equatorial killing and rampaging villages and displacing thousands of people. All these meant that there was no peace and there was no security for anybody in Southern Sudan.

The 1st Vice President of Sudan and Chairman of SPLM Lt Gen Salva Kiir failed to live up as leader and could not take any action about any of the problems. In Khartoum he had failed to effect his position except leaving to relatives to run it their way and he slowly deserted to Juba and hence SPLM continued to die a slow death because there was no charismatic leader whom the word SPLM could be associated with. In the North SPLM was largely left to people like Ysir Arman who had their Northern personal interests and former party interests to cater for rather than the original goals of the SPLM to free people from marginalisation and un-proportional distribution of wealth. Yaisr Arman also marginalised the Northerners as much as Kiir did in the South.

Sudan People’s Liberation Movement – Democratic Change is the Answer

Faced with such catalogue of failure and the unwillingness of the system to even accommodate an inch of democracy and equality and transparency there was no way except for progressive people in SPLM to split and carry on the vision of the SPLM away from the vices created by old SPLM which were for tribalism, nepotism, marginalisation, corruption and bad Governance. Some people claimed they could do change within, but a bad system, once it takes a foot hold will not be easy to dismantle soon. We had seen good examples from other post colonial independent African countries where the countries went from the boom of Colonial era to failed countries with decades of neglect and under-development. The only field that developed was corruption, the same field in which SPLM did start well and it had been getting worse. Good examples of the countries are Zimbabwe where change is coming almost after 30 years of totalitarian corrupt rule which had no limit what it could do. Another good example was Congo where it took Kabila 20 years to build an enough army to overthrow dictator Mobute Seseko who turned the country into virtual private property no more than what Lt General Salva Kiir is doing with South Sudan right now.

Hence without immediate change the tribal and corrupt system will cement itself into a monarchy where everything belong to one ethnic group and the country could disintegrate to a complete anarchy as has-been manifested in the tribal fights in the past few months with killed thousands of people already. As such progressive people had to split from old SPLM and carry on the original manifesto of SPLM which was more against marginalisation and under-development of the different corners of Sudan. SPLM –DC will implement democracy and change, moving from a corrupt tribal system to a system based on equality and justice, inclusion, transparent and good governance. SPLM-DC will introduce fairness where appointments will be based on competency and efficiency and we will discourage tribal tendencies so that all South Sudanese tribes will again live in harmony and be patriotic for their country.

The lack of leadership for the SPLM has now been addressed by the SPLM Democratic Change led by Chairman and leader Dr. Lam Akol who appeals to all the people across Sudan. Also Dr. Lam Akol has brought deputies of good standing from both Southern Sudan and Northern Sudan. It is up to the Sudanese masses to conform these people in the Congress promised in two months and there is no reason why other people try undermining SPLM-DC without waiting to see whether they can really do the change themselves by voting in SPLM-DC executive branches. We will not be making deals to stay in office deals like old SPLM. We want change and if you think we are not capable then come and run SPM-DC because it is up to the masses to confirm us at Congress or throw us away at Congress. Why should anybody be scarred of democracy?

SPLM must abide by the Principle of Democracy

It is high time that SPLM leaders admit failure and accept reasonability for the collapse of South Sudan and then live to the spirit of democracy. In democracy defeat and failure cannot be taken as the end of the world. When you have failed as a government you cannot turn around and try to bribe or box your way still to stay in power. Recently even SPLM leaders like Salva Kiir have tried to woo back some Equatorians by claiming to donate cars to WES chiefs and to donate money in Eastern Equatoria to Budu County. Mr President Freedom cannot be bought with such small things and if you wanted people of Equatoria to be with you, you should have introduced equality and fairness and democracy long time ago. Time for change has come and it looks too late to influence anything by few gifts these days. The announcement of SPLM –DC seemed to have created feeling of doom among old SPLM to the extent that they behave like children who even argue on trifle things like the name of SPLM-DC. Some see SPLM name as belonging to one tribal grouping in Southern Sudan and North Sudan and other Southerners not matter whether they believed in late Dr. John Garang’s New Sudan ideology are not entitled to SPLM acronym.

The other wonder is that even highly educated people from old SPLM cannot even overcome their own emotions and accept that this is not the first time a party splits and many parties exist with similar names and different logos. All these behaviours do not add to a democratic principle which was embodied in the CPA. By rejecting democracy and going wild with threats of killing people and trying to undermine the democratic principle of the CPA, the SPLM is the one trying by all means to kill the CPA indirectly and they should stop false accusations and claims that SPLM-DC was created by NCP and NCP is the one working to destroy NCP. The reasons for SPLM-DC split have been well documented here and this has nothing to do with NCP but with SPLM failure to become a good institutionalised party itself and the move by progressive members within SPLM.

As such I’m calling on Lt General Salva Kiir Mayardit to live up halfway as a statesman and have regard for the universal declaration of human rights which guarantees to everybody the right to assemble and have freedom of speech. The SPLM leader have to make it in public address that it is illegal for his security apparatus to harass opposition parties and preventing rallies because this is against the basic principle of democracy and does not constitute a free and fair election environment which is a must to complete the implementation of the CPA.

The author is the Deputy SPLM-DC Chairman for Southern Sudan Sector. he is reachable at [email protected]