South Sudan should join Africa developing countries – Machar

July 19, 2013 (JUBA) – South Sudan’s vice-president, Riek Machar, has reiterated his dream of seeing South Sudan becoming a prosperous and happy nation where development and services to the people are quantitatively and qualitatively achieved and delivered across the country.

Within the next ten years he said he would want the two-year old country to catch up with the rest of the world, particularly the developing African countries.

The vice-president was speaking at the closing session of the thee-day 6th Speakers’ Forum, Wednesday, which he chaired and moderated during which participants discussed the current huge challenges of governance the country has been facing.

The first gathering after independence was attended by the governors of the ten states, their speakers of the assemblies and ministers of parliamentary affairs. They deliberated on issues that bring about conflicts between the executive and legislature at various levels of government as well as between the national legislature and the states’ legislative assemblies.

The forum also discussed the general challenges in governance across the country.

The vice-president reiterated the commitment to decentralized system of governance and the need to empower the various levels and respect their constitutional jurisdictions, adding that the country might soon be moving towards a federal system.

Machar said there are however challenges that have been hampering efforts of service delivery and development among which corruption and insecurity rank the top.

Corruption he said was rampant in government contracts, tax collections, land sale and misuse of money meant for provision of services to the various institutions.

He reminded the gathering about the ongoing efforts by the legal instruments of government to bring the culprits to book.

“Our tax revenue collection basket has been leaking”, he said, adding that he believed only one-tenth of the revenues collected from the country’s borders and internal trade reaches the government’s chest while the rest is pocketed by individuals.

Insecurity, he said, was also responsible for taking the chunk of the nation’s budget as provision of security takes priority in the budget allocations every year for the last eight years.

In normal circumstances, Machar said he would want construction of roads and electrification across the country to take the top priority followed by agriculture.

The country’s vice-president recently has been publicly expressing his dreams of South Sudan becoming the “African Tiger”, similar to the Asian Tigers such as Singapore, which surprised the world with rapid development to the level of the first world in a very short time.

He reminded that with the huge untapped various resources including the human resources and the preferable geographical location of South Sudan in the centre of Africa, the new nation can quickly rise up and become an economic hub in the continent.

Roads and electricity are important in order to move the rest of the development programs and services delivery, including making it possible to access areas of agriculture and livestock that can help diversify the economy.

With roads and electricity government projects and investors would flow to the country’s corners and villages, he said.

He warned that corruption and insecurity were serious matters that should be tackled head-on; adding investment capital is coward and can shy away from a country where there is corruption and insecurity.

On South Sudan’s rank as the 4th failed state, Machar said he was not acquainted with the criteria used to reach to this conclusion but suggested that the ranking was a challenge brought about by the weak institutions of governance.

(ST)