Is SPLM-IO Becoming Politically Irrelevant?

Left: President Kiir; Right: VP, Dr. Riek Machar

By Kuir ë Garang

What I have noticed about Dr. Riek Machar is that he believes if he sticks to the truth and facts, then things will work out well. For some strange reasons, he has internalized this morally necessary but politically unpalatable reality. For a politician, this is odd, and very much so. He has been pushing this narrative now for well over a decade, that the world would side with him because he says the truth and President Kiir does not. But as he very well knows, truth in politics is a casualty of political schemes, interests and hypocrisies.

This does not mean there is no such a thing as truth or that truth does not matter. The issue is this: Truth, yes; but cui bono, who benefits?

Since August 17, 2015, when President Kiir and Dr. Riek Machar signed the agreement for the resolution of conflict in South Sudan (ARCISS) and then revitalized it on September 12, 2018, Dr. Riek Machar labored under the bewildering assumption that President Kiir will implement the agreement as stipulated in all its provisions. He also believes that if President Kiir does not implement the agreement, then peace partners and mediators will force him to ensure that all the provisions of the agreement are implemented.

This is a strange state of mind in politics, especially in countries Stuart Hall has described as complexly structured societies. I can say South Sudan is one of them.

President Kiir has shown time and again that he is either not interested in implementing the agreement or he does not know how to implement the agreement. This is a warranted presumption. Why Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO) still believes that President Kiir will change and implement the agreement is beyond me.

SPLM-IO has no political leverage. They only believe that truth and facts are on their side and that regional leaders will see who is at fault. But Kiir is the president so how regional leaders approach him is not as a subordinate or someone they can force to accept their punitive dictates.

This is something SPLM-IO must understand. Hear this again: They cannot, and will not, force Kiir’s hand! He is their colleague even when they at times act condescendingly toward him. IGAD leaders tried threatening Kiir like an infant in 2015. We know what happened.

If President Kiir must change, then that condition of change must be a political leverage Dr. Riek and SPLM-IO develop, either within the region or within the country. The agreement itself is not a leverage, but SPLM-IO believes it is.  The case of the Tumaini Initiative is a good example. It shows they neither have political leverage nor are they taken seriously in the region.

Running to mediators and regional leaders regularly to share grievances and the contravention of the agreement by President Kiir will only prove to Kiir that you are politically impotent and potentially becoming irrelevant. When regional leaders share Riek’s grievances with Kiir as casual advisories among colleagues, then any chance of Kiir taking you seriously dwindles with time.

Mediators and regional leaders can only urge the parties to the agreement to work toward the implementation of the agreement. That is all they can do. The people of South Sudan suffer when the agreements are not implemented; but President Kiir does not. He suffers no disincentive when he runs SPLM and ARCISS through the mud. As a frustrated former Ethiopian Prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, once said about the South Sudanese peace talks in Addis Ababa in 2015, the peace process had become meta-talks, talks about talks, not talks about peace.

SPLM-IO and Dr. Riek must find a way, through their own internal political mechanics, to force President Kiir to implement the agreement. No one outside Juba will do that. When President Kiir removed the minister of defense, Angelina Teny, on March 3, 2023, all SPLM-IO could do was share their displeasure and disenchantment with his actions. That was all.

It is time to realize that SPLM-IO political relevance in South Sudan should no longer be through the revitalized peace agreement. It must grow as a political entity. This is time for a political make-over. Even when we all know SPLM-IO is not necessarily on the wrong about ARCISS, and we know that facts and truth are on their side, being doggedly fixated on R-ARCISS is a dangerous political naivete. SPLM-IO’s long-term relevance should be through an institutionalized, coherent platform as a political party. That is the future, and that is the future of South Sudan. If Riek has no political leverage against Kiir, and facts to this date show he does not, and if regional leaders only convey advisories to Kiir, then it is time for Riek to change course. Political and strategic monotony is a sure path to political oblivion.

SPLM risk becoming, or it has already become, politically irrelevant. Unless of course being in government and occupying functionless, but fat government positions is how SPLM-IO wants to remain politically relevant in perpetuity.

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Kuir ë Garang (PhD), is the editor of The Philosophical Refugee. Twitter/X: @kuirthiy

 

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