Kiir must stand to the truth

By Amos C. Ngueny

October 10, 2009 — The recent fabricated news on the death of the President of the Government of Southern Sudan, which later were unfounded, nearly hued this country in the making, and the whole Sudan, in to chaos. Some people received the news and were happy while silent, others were gravely desperate and shouted, and the third group was also desperate but contained its emotion as it doubted the source. It has, therefore, vehemently added to an already known political verity that, Kiir is loved as a leader and a person, and he is also hated as a leader and a person.

The group that enjoyed silent happiness is that of opportunists, who want to capitalize on tragic incidents that befall the people of Southern Sudan. The group was short in the tongues, waiting to sheet tears of deceit, and to lead in a pretentious mourning with people of Southern Sudan. The group that shouted was that of restless and skittish cronies of certain aspiring leaders, who were unable to control predicted happiness from their failed connivation. And the last group is that which wants the people of Southern Sudan to reach its destiny in peace amid their trust in Kiir as a leader and person. There were other more groups.

It is good now that he is alive, but there is need for this to be given weight, and equally be investigated. This is so, given that, even the death of our late leader John Garang started with fabrications, which in all summarized to actual and now believable elimination of the then national figure. Kiir himself must know that, in one way or the other, there are assignation attempts, and probably the time the news broke out was the calculated time of his death, which failed. In the other way, public reaction of the people of southern Sudan was put under test to enable the master minders estimate, and plan fairly for the magnitude of the outcome.

Unlike John Garang, Kiir was known to favor secession in the bush war and is now seen to be alleviated to a choice by Southern Sudanese that favors secession of the region from the Republic of Sudan. This is why the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement comes under fire most often from the National Congress Party, that it must put unity of the country the first priority in the referendum comes 2011. If there is anything that enemies of independent Southern Sudan could make against this choice comes the referendum, it is partly to eliminate whoever they perceive as a stumbling block in deceiving Southerners to sell out their distinct African identity and comprehensive destiny. Aren’t there southerners who want to subscribe to grand deceit of their own people waiting to exercise their choice in an internationally supervised referendum?

However, bearing in mind the essence for maintaining stability in the whole Sudan and specifically Southern Sudan, truth must equally be said, because it is this truth that sets one free. The clash Saturday at Juba University – Khartoum campus – between the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and its splinter Sudan People’s Liberation Movement for Democratic Change (SPLM-DC) is a testimony that, there is an external lethal need to distort anything SPLM, and an impatient internal need by a clique to get party’s top leadership in the SPLM for prestige in anti – tribal hegemony campaign.

All these are good but only the right of the people must be respected by allowing them to choose their leaders in a peacefully conducive environment; an environment in which leaders do not line up primitively as if they are going for a relief food distribution but rather that one which is based on one’s credibility based on past records. This is why any one who talks of SPLM-DC appears elusive because there is no way an unstable personality could be entrusted with a delicate task of guiding the convoluted destiny of the oppressed however much academically intelligent the personality could be.

The concern here is that, Kiir must not bore our ears as his subjects and compatriots of only pledges with out tangible action. There are many cases the President promised investigations of but they did not yield to the expectations. We know he is one of those leading members in the SPLM, who are committed fully – with out turning back – to the cause of the people of Southern Sudan. Such news, especially in a country like Sudan, is linked to violence in which many people eventually die. If Kiir is not interested in his own life, he must walk these fabrications for the sake of the people of Southern Sudan by finding out the sources and outlets of these unfiltered allegations, and bring those found behind to justice, including the media houses implicated.

The people of Southern Sudan completely do not even see anything in his deputy, and Kiir must therefore, prove himself viable by investigating this insecurity threat that has gone to his own doorsteps, and subject the agents to the due course of law. Anything less than that is an authentication that he can not maintain his own personal security and should not be entrusted with such position that encompasses all rights of Southern Sudanese, and ultimately, he is betraying Southerners and the marginalized people on the trust they bestowed on him that there shall one day be Southern Sudan in which an unnecessary death of a person could not be tolerated. Kiir must stand to the truth with support from Internal Affairs’ Gier Chuang Aluong.

The writer is a researcher of Biochemistry and Human Psychology at Kenyatta University, Nairobi and is currently in Juba. He can be reached at [email protected].