What the Republic of South Sudan Leadership Should Do. "What I am calling your attention to is us the elites. We are the harbingers of corruption. We are the snatchers of public property." 23 July 2011 By Alphonse Akol Thiik.
Traumatized People: Before going into details of what I see as first things first, I would like to draw the attention of our President, together with the leadership: Start your work while keeping in mind the following: Know very well from the beginning that the type of people you are coming to administer in your independent New Country are people who have been traumatized by long suffering from grinding poverty, disease, war and ignorance for more than twenty seven years; especially the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) soldier and Internally Displaced People (IDPs) returning from the Republic of North Sudan and from other parts of South Sudan. They are a people who need first to be properly taken care of. Nothing can prevent taking care of them since we are now going to be getting our revenues from our oil and not being cheated as was the case in the last six and half years and will not be shared 50-50 again. These traumatized people want to forcefully break with the grinding poverty they suffered from; and so want to be richer overnight, losing sight or ignoring the rules of civility through differentiating between what is yours or theirs and that of the public, an act better known as corruption. They will undermine this civilized behavior and grab anything that comes their way in order to get rich overnight. But this group mentioned above will not do much harm to the Republic. They need only to be helped stand on their own feet. The soldier’s life must of necessity be improved so that a soldier stands healthy as a real soldier as we use to know them in the past. Elites the Problem: What I am calling your attention to is us the elites. We are the harbingers of corruption. We are the snatchers of public property. We must be watched with great and especial care. Hence the daily spoken subject called corruption, it is from us the elites. The elites are the type of people, if you attempt to restraint them from what is public, they rash to take up arms against the State. If somebody doubts this, what could have been the reason for Lt. Gen. George Aathor Deng taking up arms with others against the nation he fought so hard to be realized, simply because he lost the seat of Governorship in his State of Jonglei? If somebody fails in an election, the agents who were supporting him/her take up arms against the state because they say this person that has been failed had promised to appoint me a minister or a commissioner. Others took up arms for dubious and absurd reasons such as corruption and domination by one tribe, sometimes it is some tribes against others as if these vices are fought with guns and not with laws. Start work knowing that these are the type of people you are coming to manage. But good real work needs things mentioned above to be addressed and then prioritization of things to do first before others. Identify alias: As I see it, the first thing to do is to identify nations that are friendly to us -we actually know them - with whom to discuss, agree and sign defense pacts. If this is done, it will be a good safety-valve for our national security. Once such pacts are agreed upon and signed, an army of one especial country - which I do not want to name here but we all know which that country is - should be made to bring a battalion if not two to come and train our army for two to three years, more if need be. Military Education: Next to it is to open a Military University College in which the army of that same alia country will for a long time participate as teachers, lecturers and professors that will graduate military officers who are not only militarily qualified university graduates but those that have also studied other disciplines and majoring in military sciences. If we accept to do these as the first priority, we will have concretized our security on the ground and I do not need to lecture to you what concretized security is for development to take off smoothly if there are monetary and human resource capital and which I believe are available. Tarmac Roads: The next things are roads. No one can do a meaningful development without concrete roads all over the Republic. And if we are to have concrete roads, we must immediately tender out bids to companies, especially foreign ones, to construct three refineries, one in Greater Upper Nile, the other in Greater Bahr el Ghazal and the third in Greater Equatoria. The importance of these is to make diesel and petroleum products including tarmac material available throughout the Republic. Do this and you will see concrete/tarmac roads mushrooming within a very short time. Universities: The next things in line are the universities. We now have about seven universities functioning and others whose Vice Chancellors are either not yet appointed or about to be appointed. All the Vice Chancellors of the functioning ones should be given a sum of money to carry out feasibility studies of all that they stand badly in need of, like lecture halls, hostels for student populations, books for libraries, residential houses for T/Assistants, Lecturers, Associates and Professors and finally support staff. These feasibility studies should stay ready in all the Universities so that if any nation opts to support us like when the E.U recently gave us a grant of 200 million Euros, such money can directly be applied to such purposes. I am sure that a lot of countries will volunteer to support development in the Republic. We are not wanting for countries to support us; all we need is to be shrewd and efficient in our planning and make corruption a taboo. If we fight hard to reduce corruption to manageable level, I am sure the international community will stand with us till we reach a level we will need them no more. Agriculture: Agriculture is the next thing to look into seriously. The Minister of Agriculture must equally get money to conduct feasibility studies, survey all fertile lands in all greater regions and categories those into which ones are good for what crops through scientific soil analyses. Then distribute land to citizens according to their capacities. Some agriculture companies can be invited to come and partner individual owners of the schemes on bases of whatever ratio they can agree on for a given period of time and when that time is up, the Company leaves the owner of the scheme alone and can easily get another scheme owner whom he can partner. Schemes could be made as large as 2000 feddans, 1500 feddans, 1000 feddans and minimum, 600 feddans. This acreage should be kept as above so that others with sufficient means, acquired through dubious methods, shouldn’t own the land or deprive others of land. Areas, like the one between Bor and Pibor, should be surveyed, mechanized and distributed. Irrigation can be introduced in those areas by digging out canals from the Nile River to those areas. Education and Health: Education and health come next because the seven universities plus and more that will be opened and the private universities that are already sprouting up in the Republic need more senior secondary and primary schools to feed them. Many hospitals, dispensaries and health centers need to be opened because if the human resource is not healthy enough, the human resource will render development unable to grow because an unhealthy human resource cannot raise production high. Those are few of my ideas that I would like to share with the public and may Almighty God bless us all and make us stop foolish hatred others wage against others on no reasonable grounds; and if there is reasonable ground, there are mechanisms by which such problems can be resolved. Amen. Posted in: Opinions CommentsThere are currently no comments, be the first to post one. Add Comment Log in to post a comment. If you are not a Gurtong member yet, register here. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "JFD info" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/jfdinfo?hl=en.
