Federalism based on Regionalism vs that based on partisanism May. 15Featured, Uncategorized2 comments
BY: Chol Ajak Demac, ARIZONA, USA, MAY/15/2013, SSN; Lately, I have been monitoring the political development in South Sudan and I am in awe on how fast the situation is deteriorating and how fast the SPLM lost and will continue to loose grounds as a national political party! Things may get worse for the South and the SPLM, unless miracles happen. There have been a lot of talks lately on how best to govern South Sudan, some are calling for Federalism others are calling for centralism and few are for I don’t care party!? Without taking sides on which is the best way to govern the South, one can only be concerned in the way the debate is being carried out. For example last week in Juba the greater Equatoria region, on their extraordinary conference, called for a federal system of governance. Today we learn that the greater Bhar el Ghazal is due to hold their extraordinary conference in Wau from the 15th to 20th of May this year and who knows? Greater Upper Nile may hold it conference soon (who’s better than who?) Now here are the questions: 1- Is it best to tackle the problems of politics and governing the country by going regional? Did we try that before? Where did we end up in the past by going regional on the issues of national interest? “Those who fail to learn from the history are doomed to repeat it” or “he who lives to forget his past lives to die of his past.” Knowing the past and keeping the past helps us to shape the future, and may avoid the re-occurrences of past disasters. 2- One can’t help but to notice that all the leaders of so-called regional conferences are seniors SPLM members. That begs the question: did the SPLM fail as a party to hold these kinds of conferences? Why can the SPLM organize the conference that have nothing to do with who should or shouldn’t be the Chairmen but rather debate and come out with the solutions on how best to run the country, keeping in mind that the SPLM had been the ruling party for the last 8 years? 3- Others may say that they tried all the above within the ruling party and failed for one reason or another!!! I don’t have any inside information to agree or disagree with them, but I can’t imagine that their failure is due to where they hailed from or which region they came from. In such a case the problem of how to govern South Sudan shouldn’t be regionalized, but rather nationalized in terms of Political parties. In short, if the SPLM fails you, you quit and form a party that calls for federation in the South and I bet you will find a lot of supporters from all corners of the nation. 4- Some may ask why worry about the regional-driven politics? To be candid, it doesn’t worry me when a region gets together to address problems in the region such as insecurity in the area, because of the tribal and inter-tribal conflicts, or tackles the issues of developments in the private sector or agriculture improvement. Most of you will agree how urgent the South is in need of such conferences!! I only worry when we try to use the regions to score political points at the national level for these reasons: A- Although the intention may be good, there are always a few who will try to hijack the situation and misuse it to farther their self interest will can result in dividing the Country on the regional line and tribal politics. B- With all due respect, our people are still young when it comes to politics that include the so called intellectuals (the roots of most problems in RSS), therefore if we base our political demands on the region instead of party platform, we are risking further divisions among our people, and the words of our national anthem “Land of great abundance, Uphold us united in peace and harmony,” will be things of the past. C- Let’s all assume that Bahr el-Ghazal calls for centralism in their upcoming conference. And the Upper Nile calls for either centralism or regionalism. Are we not setting up the country on the path of civil war based on regionalism? But if we do it based on the parties platforms then each party will have supporters in every town, city or region of the nation, and that can lead us towards more unification of our nation. Finally, it is my hope that when it come to discussing the national issues we should always try to keep our emotion away from it, and have some intelligence deliberations . Last but not least, on my open letter to Mr. President Kiir Mayardit, published on August 3, 2011, I asked him the following question: Are we going to be the beacon of light and hope in Africa or the laughing Stock of the World? Fellow citizens of Republic of South Sudan, I’m appealing to your better nature to try your level best in answering this question, and ask ourselves what kind of Country did we really fight for and dreamt about?? May Almighty God guide us towards being a peaceful and democratic Nation, so God bless South Sudan Chol Ajak Demac, Former Secretary General of SPLM Chapter in Arizona State. (USA) and can be reach at [email protected] << Older 2 Comments Chol Deng Anyieth May 15, 2013 at 8:48 pm The regional conferences always result in promotion of regionalism, sectarianism, tribalism, nepotism, corruption and embezzlement of public wealth. The regional conferences are used as tools for achieving regional interest of a clique within the government. The common example is the so-called ‘Leader of a community’. Most of the constitutional post holders prefer to be called ‘leaders of communities’. But South Sudanese communities know the tribal chiefs and the constitutional post holders are called politicians. Unfortunately, the appointment of constitutional post holders in South Sudan based on community leaders but not part leaders. What a fiasco! Reply Dau-network May 15, 2013 at 11:28 pm I think greater bhar el Ghazal are about to convince president Kiir not to contest again to keep his reputation and love of his history clean before he becomes bad in public eyes like other long serving presidents . If leaders from that region really care, they will advice him to and he MUST nominate SPLM candidate but not Dr Hitler. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "South Sudan Info - The Kob" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
