Can Al-Bashir’s regime be trusted with elections?
“Life most urgent question is: what are you doing for others?”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
By Luk Kuth Dak
December 1, 2009 — Like many other survivors of the Arabs’ massacre of South Sudan’s languages, I am thankful that my Nuer logistical skills have by and large remained intact, despite the long years in the United States of America. To this day, I still remember an old Nuer saying that goes: “ The Jallaba have no shame!” As years went by, I came to realize and actually believed their vision and the wisdom behind it all.
It doesn’t get any much worse when one’s country is condemned by the UN and classified as one of the most corrupt, most incompetent and most immoral nations of the world. A few weeks ago, the corruption watchdog Transparency International has released the list of the world’s most corrupt nations. Sudan ranked third.
In the aftermath of that shameful report, one would hope that the National Islamic Front NIF, under the leadership of the most wanted fugitive Omar al Basher would begin to look onwards, take the necessary majors to repair the damage that they have inflicted on our integrity, accept full responsibility for its actions and to be courageous enough to apologize to the Sudanese people, for robbing them of every penny they earned for the past two long decades and counting, that their country was only proceeded on the list of the world’s most corrupt countries by the( lawless) Somalia, a country that has never see a central government since 1990s.
But no!
Evidently, they know where to dump their garbage. Instead, they went with the easy target, South Sudan. Their bigoted leadership and the affiliated ( brown nose) media outlets, disingenuously still believe that they have the moral authority to accuse the Government of South Sudan GOSS, and the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement SPLM of a so-called “ Massive corruption” and squandering of its share of the oil revenue, which often comes late, if at all. “We have the right to investigate where the public funds are being misused in South Sudan,” said Dentist Mustafa Osman Ishmael, the presidential Advisor to al Basher. Now the question is: in the light of the UN report, who should really be accusing who of corruption, when the ink in which the UN report was written with is still wet?
So, what’s corruption?
What comes to some people’s minds at the first glance- myself included – when they hear about the term corruption, is that it has to do only with the embezzlement of public funds. But, in actual fact, it is deeper, broader and far more complex than we think. Indeed, corruption is “Lack of integrity or honesty, especially susceptibility to bribery; use of a position of trust for dishonest gain.”
Given that definition, how Sudan, a country with such despicable record on corruption and morals could possibly be trusted with anything, much less an election that, if conducted fairly and squarely, it could very well bring an end to its tenure? But unless one is in denial, the results of the upcoming general elections are already known. It’s going to be a land-slide victory for the NCP. In that case, the most logical question ought to be: what sense does it make for anyone to run for an election that has already been decided? I do not know about you, but am not wasting my time.
Final thought:
No longer should we take orders from that corrupt regime of tyrant and war criminal Omer Al Bashir. Our share of the oil revenue is not about a handout from the NCP or its radical wing, the NIF. It’s a right, and only the people of South Sudan should be the ones to question their government. Our people have fought for far too long, to allow a bunch of bigots, the likes of Nafi Ali Nafi, Mohamed Munduor al Mahdi Fatahi Shilla and Mustafa Osman, to tell us what to do and not do. If the Northerners really cared about South Sudan, they won’t have built some hundreds of Mosques and Islamic universities in the South, but not a single school!!
The author is former anchorman, Juba radio. He can be reached at: [email protected].