Brawl in Aweil counties over fate of elected lawmakers
April 4, 2016 (JUBA) – The community and youth leadership in South Sudan’s Aweil North and West counties are in a brawl over withdrawal of trust and confidence from lawmakers who allegedly refused to cooperate and work with the state government.
Chief and youth leaders held an urgent meeting in relation to this and demanded that current lawmakers in the two counties be impeached and replaced by other nominees.
The exact cause of tension remains largely speculative, with community leaders providing more than two counts of charges, as the reasons for withdrawing trust and confidence from some members of parliament seen as unable to represent the community in the state assembly.
Several community leaders and local officials, including the Aweil west and north county commissioners confirmed communities under their administrative jurisdictions have expressed strong dissatisfactions with the performance of some of their representatives and so decided to launch unprecedented campaigns in which several of thousands of signatures were collected from members of the communities to withdraw trust and confidence from some legislators.
Some of the members affected MPs were accused of more than three counts, ranging from neglecting interests of the community, lack of cooperation with local administrators to enable community get services from the government because of the long standing dispute they have had with successive administrations in the former Northern Bahr el Ghazal state before it was divided into three states by the presidential establishment order in 2015.
Other charges, sources told Sudan Tribune, are promotion of sectional politics to drive wedge and divide the electorates in order to gain support for short terms political gains.
The legislators implicated have, however, denied the charges regarding them as a politically motivated move, vowing not to relinquish their positions until when substantial evidences backing up the allegations are produced.
They claimed that community decisions were not based on constitutional provisions and therefore unlawful to give up.
Achak Thiep Thiep from Aweil West County representing Gomjuer constituency is one of the affected legislators. Other affected members from Aweil North are Garang Mawien Mawien, representing constituency number 5 for Korok West with his colleague, Ernest Mangok Mangok, representing constituency 6 for Korok North and Angok Achuol Barjok for constituency number 01 in Malual center.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with Sudan Tribune on Sunday, Garang Mawien Mawien, one of the affected legislators, said one of the charges brought against him at the meeting was that he allegedly refused to relocate to Raja, the new administrative headquarters for Lol state, one of the 28 states created by presidential establishment order when president Salva Kiir in October issued a controversial establishment order to create more administrative units instead of 10 states.
“There were two issues which they brought up. They asked why I refused to go to Raja. I replied that I did not refuse to go to Raja. The assembly has not been constituted; the speaker and the deputy speaker have not been selected. The governor did not invite them. I also told them I am in Nyamellel, which is part of Lol state,” explained Mawien.
“The other issue was that I refused to work with the governor; I said I did not refuse to work with the governor,” he added,
The legislator said he believes his troubles worsened after he questioned why county commissioners took over offices before taking oath of office in addition to the issue of the cabinet ministers taking oath of office before being vetted by the state assembly.
“The other issue was the issue of the salaries of the civil servants taken to Raja and these people were unable to get means of transport”, he stressed.
(ST)