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| Photo: http://apgopohannahbrown.blogspot.ca/ |
Since
SPLM-in-Opposition declared their preference for constitutional Federal System
in South Sudan, there’s been a lot of heated debate by South Sudanese in the government,
in the opposition, in the media and on the street. Understandably,
the discussion pits those who support it against those who don’t support it.
While I don’t have any problem
with the Federal System per se, I
don’t believe it’s going to solve any of our problems now and in the future.
It’s true that we need a complete overhaul of our political governance and
social systems in South Sudan; however, we need to understand that for any
systemic transparency to work, the leadership’s attitude, the citizen-citizen
relations and the general understanding of power structure, have to change. As
long as the leadership’s attitude and its perception of power and the country
remain the same, it doesn’t matter what system we institute in South Sudan,
we’ll always remain in a mess.
Unless we have both a good
system and good people in leadership, things will remain the same: bad. A good
system and a bad leadership or a good leadership and a bad system are all the
same: bad!
We need to understand also
that a Federal System will not auto-create. The constitutional provisions that
will create and inform it will still need the cooperation of all the
stakeholders in the country. It wouldn’t
be a mere importation of foreign Federal Systems such as the one in Nigeria,
Ethiopia, Canada, USA or any other federated governance system in the world.
There has to be internal, idiosyncratic realities to be put into account.
Since power in South Sudan is
concentrated in the hand of one man, the opposition see the Federal System as
another way to clip the presidential powers.
However, I personally don’t
think a Federal System is what we need now. All we need is a well-informed,
broad-based and structured decentralization of power. What we have now is actually
a form of a Federal System (even if it’s not constitutionally stated as such) as
we have state parliaments and governments. It’s therefore important that state
governments be given greater and functional autonomy.
This means that ministries
such as Education, Agriculture, and law enforcement sectors should be given to
the states. Besides, there should be no presidential and national government’s
interference in running the affairs of the states; such as the removal of the
governors by the president or the president being consulted by the governor on
the appointment of state ministers.
State constitutions should
have constitutional clauses or provisions on how to remove or replace the
governors. Since governors are elected officials, they need to be removed in
the same democratic manner by the state parliament as stipulated in the state
constitution. And more importantly, there has to be a very well-regulated
economic leeway for the states to create their own functional economic systems,
internally and externally; nationally and internationally.
And as always in South Sudan,
there are those who oppose the Federal System (taken at face value) because they
assume the three southern states of South Sudan would use it as an excuse to
bully residents of war-ravaged states just like what happened with the ‘Kokora’
in the 1980s. Given the attitude of the citizens in these three states towards
citizens of other states resident there, the concern is not an empty claim.
The three southern states are
relatively stable and have been less affected by war. Given the way the eastern
states have been affected, some people see the Federal System as an unfair
condemnation of the citizens of these states given the fact that the mess we
are in wasn’t created by the citizens but by the same politicians who think
they have a solution to the country’s problems. It’s therefore conceivable that
citizens in the three southern states, who complain a lot about ‘occupation of their
ancestral lands,’ would use the Federal System to get rid of residents of other
states in their states.
But let’s not forget, as I
mentioned earlier, that the kind of the Federal System to be instituted in
South Sudan, should it become possible, will be informed by a new constitution.
State-to-state relations, citizens’ travels and place of residence and the
control over national resources will all be dictated by what is included in the
constitution. Let’s not just assume that because Canada has a Federal System and
each province (state) has absolute control over its resources to the exclusion
of other provinces then such a thing is going to be the case in South Sudan.
Competing interests will be
there at the constitutional drafting time. The technical aspects would not be
as easy as we romanticize them. Each and every state will have to protect
its interest by bringing to the fore social, economic and political
generalities that favor them. In no way will the Federal System decent on us in
exactly the way we want it.
We’ve already seen Vice
President, Wani Igga, backtracking on the Federal System, which he favored in
2011 (and oppose now) just because Dr. Riek Machar favors it. And both
President Kiir and VP Igga are saying that Riek isn’t the originator of the
idea of the Federal System in South Sudan.
Wani claims Riek ‘stole’ the
idea from ‘Equatorians’ while President Kiir says the Federal System has always
been the demand of South Sudanese even before independence. True partly,
because the idea was first proposed by the ‘Southern Liberal Party’ with Both
Diu and Stanislaus Pasyama in 1953 and later emphasized by the ‘Federal Party’
under Ozboni Mondri and Father Saturnino Lahure in 1958. So technically,
everyone talking about the ‘Federal System’ now is ‘stealing’ and a ‘liar’ as
per the VP reasoning.
These leaders need to know
that it’s irrelevant when it was proposed and who proposed it first. The most
important question is: IS IT GOOD FOR SOUTH SUDAN NOW? IF SO, THEN HOW? IF NOT,
THEN WHY?
Twitter @kuirthiy
