Kiir calls on governors and speakers to work for unity of the leadership
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July 15, 2013 (JUBA) – South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir has called
on state governors and speakers of the 10 legislative state assemblies
to work for the unity of the country’s leadership.
JPEG - 35.6 kb
South Sudanese President Salva Kiir (Reuters)
Kiir made these remarks Monday while officiating at the opening of the
6th speakers’ forum held at the National Legislative Assembly. The
event is the first ever held in the country’s post-independence era.
"Work for what unites us all," the president told the gathering of
senior officials mainly from the South’s ruling party - the SPLM.
The speakers’ forum was created to build the relationship between the
executive and the legislature and brought together the governors and
their ministers of parliamentary affairs as well as the speakers of
the state parliaments.
In the recent past, there have been conflicts and lack of cooperation
between the national legislature and the respective states’
legislative assemblies on one hand and the executive and the
legislature on the other.
The acting speaker of the council of states, Remy Oler, did not mince
his words when he vividly described the deplorable situation of
disrespect to the legislative assemblies, expressing the need to avoid
authoritarianism in the country.
An example, Oler said, was what he described as the "sour"
relationship between the legislative assembly in Northern Bahr el
Ghazal state and its executive under the governorship of Paul Malong
Awan, after the latter fired six elected MPs and resisted parliament’s
directives to have them reinstated.
Kiir, who looked tired and exhausted before delivering his speech,
also reiterated his commitment to fight corruption in the country and
urged all the organs of the government to battle it.
“We cannot achieve any development if we encourage the corrupt use of
public funds. We must fight it so that these financial resources are
used to support development projects", he said.
The anti-corruption fight, he added, will not only be limited to the
national government and certain institutions, but will further involve
the three branches of the government, including the executive, the
legislature and the judiciary
“I will not relent on this fight because this is about the public
resources", the president added.
The South Sudanese leader further reminded the gathering that he
personally took part in the decades of war against the Khartoum
government not for the benefit of his comrades, but so as to bring
change to the south, which seceded from the north two years ago.
President Kiir, his deputy Riek Machar and the speaker of the national
legislative assembly, James Wani Igga, appeared harmoniously before
the parliamentarians, governors and diplomatic corpses, as they walked
into the parliament hall and sat together at the high table in
acknowledgement of one another for the first time since the rise of
political temperatures for the last two weeks over insisting signs of
future leadership contests.
Kiir, during his speech did acknowledge the presence of Machar, unlike
during the 9 July independence celebration, when he failed to do so,
causing public concerns and rumours of emerging cracks in the top
echelons.
Before the president’s speech, however, participants in the hall had
to endure a “nuisance” created by an “unknown” church priest who
started the program by a supposedly prayer, turned statement, which
was described by a lawmaker as a “one-sided politically motivated
prayer.”
The priest, in a statement, before delivering the prayer warned
against anyone who would politically challenge the current leadership
under Kiir, saying such a challenge “is cursed.”
His statement was interpreted to be in direct reference to the recent
declaration by the vice-president to contest for the ruling party’s
chairmanship in the upcoming national convention as well as in the
2015 presidential elections.
The statement left some MPs murmuring among themselves and inquiring
who that new young priest was and whether he was really mandated by
God to anoint the incumbent as a permanent president and discourage
democratic leadership competitions in South Sudan.
The situation also reminded the members of the parliament about the
strange coincidence of the unusual absence of senior priests in Juba
who always graced important gatherings of such kind.
“Where are the senior bishops and pastors who always blessed our
gatherings? And who is this young political priest I have never seen
and heard of before? Was he selectively recruited and brought
purposely to pray in the way he did?” whispered an MP seated near a
Sudan Tribune journalist.
This time, also, no Muslim clerk was invited to make citations from
the Quran, contrary to previous events where representatives of the
two religious groups were given the chance for opening prayers.
The speakers’ forum will continue for the next two days under the
chairmanship of the national speaker of parliament, James Wani Igga,
and expected to come up with resolutions and recommendations on how to
resolve conflicts between legislative assemblies or with the
executive.
SOUTH SUDAN NOT A FAILED STATE
James Wani Igga, on his part, assured the gathering that the
legislature would collaborate and work together with the other arms of
the government to promote democracy and good governance in order to
build viable institutions in the country and restore trust in the
government.
The parliament’s speaker, who is a deputy chair of the SPLM, denied
that the house was “a rubber stamp” of the executive. He also
dismissed reports that South Sudan was a failed state, saying the
latter inherited numerous challenges when it attained independence two
years ago.
"We are not [a] failed state comrades. How can we be a failed state
and we just became an independent country. We are just two years from
independence. How do you expect a two-year-old child to do what [an]
adult does? [Do you] Expect a child to start walking and run
simultaneously? Igga asked, amid applause from audience.
"No. It is not possible, unless you want us to perform miracles", he added.
Last month, the US-based Fund For Peace ranked South Sudan as the
world’s fourth most failed state. The young nation’s first complete
year on the Failed States Index (FSI) shows it sinking into the same
cycles of instability of many of its neighbours.
Sudan, from which the South separated in 2011 is ranked third, with
the top five places comprising countries from East and Central Africa.
DEMOCRACY SHOULD NOT BE IMPORTED
Meanwhile, the former Botswana president said his country cherishes
the rule of democracy, but added that it is a process that takes time
to be understood and embraced.
“Democracy should not be imported, it must be a homegrown system, but
it must come slowly, step by step. There should be no rush for it. It
should move at safer and steady steps”, noted Festus Gontebany Mogae.
(ST)
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