Is President Kiir an authoritarian monarch, Dr. Martin Lomuro?

 

South Sudanese ministers need to wake up. Seriously!  Their timidity has destroyed the country. Treating President Kiir like a scary, unquestionable monster is a disservice to President Kiir himself and the people of South Sudan, especially the youth. Their future is being mortgaged. We should not conflate fearing the president with respect.

South Sudanese ministers either do not know about intra and inter-ministerial protocols, or they simply do not care about them. What the minister of cabinet affairs, Dr. Martin Elia Lomuro, said recently during a parliamentary summon on June 6, 2024, typifies this.

“If the present decides and direct payments as an executive head,” he said, “do I have the power…to change? I don’t have.”  Of course he has.

Lomuro seems to assume that the president is above the law. The president is not supposed to be obeyed just because he is president. That would be an acknowledgement of authoritarianism.  President Kiir should only be obeyed if his directives adhere strictly to national laws and procurement protocols within and between various ministries and departments.  

The failure to adhere strictly to procurement protocols may be the reason why South Sudanese go for months without being paid. When will the ministers start to prioritize adherence to protocols over personality cult and elitist politico-economic cabals? Is the South Sudanese cabinet a cartel? This is the threat to human rights and social justice in South Sudan.

It is now nearly a decade and a half since South Sudan became independent, but these simple institutional protocols are not being adhered to. Who is to blame here? That “we are still a young country” is a scapegoat that has escaped into the sovereignty forest. It is time for service provision.

That the president is the head of the executive branch of government means absolutely nothing if he breaks protocols.  This is where the ministers have the authority. President Kiir cannot, and I repeat, cannot, order a minister to violate the law or break protocols if the president has decided to re-direct payments to shady “special projects?”  A minister can say “no” to the president if the law does not allow the president to order the minister. The president supervises the cabinet, but he does not, and should not, run the ministries. He has no authority to re-direct funds away from their allocated ministries unless the cabinet agrees as a collective.

President Kiir is not a monarch. He is a president of a republic. At least I want to believe that.  And the sooner ministers start to tell him, “No, Mr. President, that is against protocol and the constitution” the better things will improve for South Sudanese civilians. And this can only be done by the ministers. They have the authority to defy the president within the law and protocol.

But I am afraid Dr. Lumoro’s response to parliament is reenforcing what some of us have been saying for decades: President Kiir is South Sudan and South Sudan is President Kiir. That is tragic. Lomuro’s doubling-down a few days later, that he was taken out of context, makes the president even appear more monstrous. He retracted the truth he told parliament because he is afraid. Is President Kiir this scary?

What Dr. Lomuro should have added during his response to the parliamentary committee are the procurement protocols that, if they exist, allow the president to “direct payments.”  The president does not have his own laws from which he draws to re-direct payments for “special projects.”  “Special projects” like the one that directed 10 million away from peace implementation to the office of the president are cliched political euphemisms for corrupt practices.

But I know that South Sudan is not a democracy. Almost everyone, tragically, serves at the mercy of the president. The president has become the employer-in-chief. This is a threat to national security, democratization, and the economic prosperity of South Sudan.

It is obvious that telling the President of South Sudan he is wrong may lead to an official being decreed-out of office, or even worse. I am not oblivious. This has been the case even when the official is right. But change must begin somewhere. Dr. Lumoro either does not know he has the authority, a state of affair that would be tragic, or he is just afraid of the president. No one wants to bell the cat.

Yes, Dr. Lumoro has the power. His power are the law and institutional protocols because South Sudan is not France of Louis XVI or England of Henry VIII. Or is it? He can say “no” and take exculpatory refuge in the law and procurement protocols. Otherwise, he is telling us President Kiir is an autocrat who cannot be questioned. Is this what the good minister is telling us without telling us?  

It may be time to start showing the president how to follow the law and respect institutional protocols. He supervises the ministries; he does not run them. Saying “no” to President Kiir is a show of respect and the integrity of the administrations he leads. This is what the youth of South Sudan expect from you.

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Dr. Kuir ë Garang (PhD) is the editor of TPR  Twitter/X handle: @kuirthiy; email: kuirthiy@yahoo.com

Fool, Skeptic and the Slay Queen -- (PART 1)

Photo: by Shorena on VectorStock

It was summer. July. Hot. Being outside was therefore less desirable. There was no air conditioner in their apartment, so Fool and Skeptic spent time in the mall, cooling down. Well, it was Skeptic who loved cooling down in the mall while reading a novel or monograph on some Greek philosophy, mostly pre-Socratic philosophers.

Fool also came with novels or philosophy books with fancy titles he didn’t understand: Morality and Polyamory, Free Will and Determinism, Compatibilism and Free Will, Ubuntu and Power, Aristotelianism and African Philosophy, Phenomenology of Violence, etc. He didn’t read any of them of course. But he fancied the idea of being considered well-read.

“Fool is a well-read man,” he would say to himself looking into the mirror in his room.

For him, it was edifying. He didn’t care about what things meant objectively if people understood them in the way he liked.

But Fool’s favored pastime in the mall, as Skeptic read his books, was to stare intensely at women as they walked by. To avoid being taken for a creep, he used the book to hide his sexualizing and objectifying stares.

“How I wished my son was like you two,” a woman once said as she passed by.

Skeptic was engrossed in his reading. He didn’t hear what the woman had said.

“What did she say?”

Fool smiled: “She said she wished her son was like us.”

“You mean me!”

“Hey, don’t be like that. I have my book, so she was talking about both of us.”

“But if she knew the truth…”

“She doesn’t. So, she’s talking about both of us.”

“Okay, I give that to you,” Skeptic would say and resumed his reading.

Fool would go back to his women-watching as he called it.

As people milled around, Fool described women’ boobs, the size of their legs, the size of their buttocks, the color of their skins, their heights, and any feature that, to Skeptic, was a sexualization of women. To mock Fool, Skeptic called his women-watching, philofoology. It was foolishness personified as an artistic desire for women.  Here are sample descriptions of women in Fool's philofoology (women-watching).

“With that ass, I think God loves you, girl!

“Now, that figure is what I’m talking about!”

“With that beautiful face, I think God must have sipped his favorite wine just before he created you.”

It went on and on until they left the mall.

Men, apparently, did not exist whin philofoology. There was no man-watching. Anyone listening to Fool’s description of passersby would assume there were no men in the mall. But some of the women he described walked together with their husbands or boyfriends. Anytime Skeptic heard lamentations like the ones below, he knew Fool didn’t like what the man was doing. That was the only time men mattered in women-watching.

 “What an idiot!”

 “Look at him waddling like a pregnant duck!”

“Oh, for goodness’s sake, keep your dirty mouth from her soft cheeks!”

 “Thiɔ! Why are you holding her hand in the mall like an insecure half of a man!”

"Look at that potbelly, leading your way like your bodyguard!"

 “Oh, C’mon! How does that cockroach appeal to that beauty?”

“No complain there, you deserve that ugly slay queen.”

"Look at those chicken legs! I can break them with a mere sneeze!"

Fool laughed anytime Skeptic said he sounded like a misandrist. 

"I'm a man. How can I hate men?" Fool responded gleefully. 

But Skeptic didn't mind Fool's jealousy-inspired pseudo-misandry. It was the description of women that bothered him. When Skeptic reprehended him, he would say, “I’m just being Dickensian. Charles Dickens, you know, used to sit by the train station with his notebook and write down descriptions of people passing by.”

Skeptic would look up from his book: “First, that’s not what Dickensian means. Dickensian means his writings or the poor living conditions about which he wrote in England of the industrial revolution, remember? Anyways, Mr. Chauvinist, Dickens wasn’t only writing down descriptions of women.”

“Dickens was a man so don’t bother me…how do you know Charles Dickens wasn’t staring only at women? ‘It was the best of women. It was the worst of men’.”

“Oh Jesus, Fool! Really? So you admit you are only staring at women?”

“No, no, but I…”

Fool suddenly stopped mid-sentence. 

“Slay Queen!” Fool then whispered.

 Skeptic stared disapprovingly at Fool.

“I hate it when you do that!” Fool complained.

“Do what?” Skeptic asked with a frown.

“When you speak through…oh, never mind…she’s coming.”

“Who’s coming, Fool?”

The Slay Queen, as Fool called her, was strutting by with a commanding presence that Fool felt like cat-calling her. Having seen the temptation on Fool’s face, Skeptic stepped disapprovingly on the Fool’s right pinky toe.

“Ouch!” he writhed in pain quietly. He was wearing sandals, so the pain was more intense than it usually was when he wore his Jordans. Not wanting the Slay Queen to hear him yell in pain, he muzzled his moan. 

Fool and Skeptic were not sure about what to say if she accosted them. Girls were their kryptonite. They did not know how to talk to them.  But they knew they had to talk about the Slay Queen as she passed close by without looking at them or even greeting them. Beautiful girls didn't admire people like them, they thought.

But the Slay Queen passed by them anytime they were in the mall. It was as if she knew when they would be in the mall. She was intriguing. With a long, flowing brown wig stopping just above her buttock, yellowish red face, unnecessarily thin stilettos, her behind wiggled. That’s what Fool liked.  But Skeptic noticed that the color of her face was not natural.

“It’s just make-up,” Fool would retort back.

“Look closely. It is not just make-up,” Skeptic would say.

But on that day, she walked past them, stopped for a while and then came back. Fool was watching her from the corner of his eyes as he hid his sexualizing gaze in the book. Skeptic was not paying attention to the Slay Queen. He was, as always, busy reading.

“Hello boys!” she said with an expressionless face. 

Skeptic was startled.  Fool feigned surprise, but he had been watching her movements since she emerged from the corner and walked toward them.

“Hi!” Fool said shyly. 

“I always notice you watching me," she said. 

“Me?” Skeptic asked, surprise written all over his face.

“I apologize on behalf of my friend. We come here to read in a cool place in the company of beautiful folks,” Fool said.

She smiled. Skeptic stared in horror.

“I want to show young people that even in the age of the internet and the social media, reading remains the best way to separate oneself from the crowd,” Fool added proudly.

Skeptic was lost for words. She continued to smile.

“But I thought…”

“Yes, he thought wrong,” Fool added, cutting Skeptic short.

“I wasn’t talking about your friend. I was talking about you,” she said to Fool.

Skeptic smiled as Fool stared, astonished.

“Me? What do you mean?”  Fool asked.

“Your friend is always engrossed in his reading, so he pays no attention to me. I noticed that you pretend to be reading, but you use the book as a cover. People are too busy to notice that you aren’t reading,” she said.

Fool remained silent. Skeptic continued to smile. 

“So, do you like boys who read or boys who don’t?” Skeptic asked.

Fool was still silent. He was embarrassed.

“First, it’s men, not boys. And second, liking someone is determined by a cluster of things. Reading alone cannot cut it,” she said and puckered her lips to the left of her face. 

“Fair enough. But there is one thing that catches your eye first before you consider all other characteristics in the cluster. You can’t see that cluster the first time you see someone you like,” Skeptic said.

“Fair enough. I knew there was something special about you.” she said.

Fool was still silent. But he didn't like her last comment. 

“You don’t talk like a Slay Queen,” Fool finally said.

“Oh, God! Why would you say that?” Skeptic almost screamed at Fool.

He knew Fool was trying to sabotage his chances. 

“It’s okay, boys. I’m used to it. Men always assume I’m less intelligent because of the way I dress. They write me off as brainless until they talk to me. 'Slutty!', they say. But then I open my mouth....and then they get surprised...and then they intimidated,” she said.

“So, you like smart guys?” Fool asked.

“I like who I like, smart or not. There is of course bare minimum in intelligence I would expect.”

Fool smiled. He thought to himself: I have a chance with her.

“I notice you staring at me on the top edge of the book. I do that sometimes. That’s why I notice it.”

“Oh my God! You’re like me,” Fool beamed excitedly.

She shook her head gently: “Not so fast. But I liked you.”

“Oh, oh!” Skeptic said, smiling conspiratorially. 

“’Oh, oh!’ What?” Fool said with a grimace. 

“I think he meant the past tense ‘liked’ in my response,"  she said, explaining what Skeptic meant.

“What does that mean?” Fool asked.

“It means you disappointed her, somehow,” Skeptic said.

“What?” Fool marveled.

“I thought you only stared at me occasionally, and that you liked reading. But I can see now that you don’t like reading at all,” she said.

“So, you like reading? That makes no sense at all” Fool sounded confused. 

“It makes sense if you first try to know a person.”

“But you dress like a Slay Queen, and you bleach your skin.”

“Would you stop it! I can’t believe you!” Skeptic yelled at Fool.

Like a child, Fool had no filters. He paid no attention to the emotional impact of his words on others. He believed people shouldn’t get angry when he spoke truth to them.  Being real, he'd say.

“He’s right,” she said finally.

Skeptic was surprised: “What?”

He expected her to at least deny skin bleaching. What kind of a person admits bleaching without a moral qualm? Skeptic was confused.

“Yes, I use skin lightening creams. But that’s a conversation for another day. See you boys.”

Neither Skeptic nor Fool knew what to think of her. Her fashion style screamed “vain”, “silly,” and “shallow.” But when she opened her mouth, Skeptic only wanted her to keep on talking. She makes more sense than most of his nerdy friends. Nothing about her made sense at all. For Fool, he couldn’t understand how someone so sexy could be so smart and well informed.

 Fool's philofoology had taken an intriguing turn.

(To be continued… )

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Written by Kuir ë Garang (PhD). For permission to reprint this story, email me at kuirthiy@yahoo.com