"The military don’t start wars but politicians start it."

By Atok Dan Baguoot

With a referendum of self determination for the people of Southern Sudan and Abyei likely to vote for independence of South Sudan just less than 140 days away from now, the Central Bank of Sudan (CBoS) whose mandate and role is to regulate the economy of the greatest African country has taken a dreadful and worrying decision for the people of autonomous South by putting a twist in supplying the government of Southern Sudan with its money of oil share in Sudanese Pounds, something seen and received with a lot of questions on the sincerity of the ruling National Congress Party in this marriage of convenience and national cake sharing. 

Under the wording of Comprehensive Peace Agreement CPA, the government of Southern Sudan is supposed to be paid by the Central Bank of Sudan its 50% oil money in hard currency into account managed by the sub Bank known as Bank of South Sudan (BoSS). 

However, there has been a bitter experience between the principal parties to peace pact in transparency, marketing and equitable sharing of oil revenues. According to Global Witness international, the South has not been getting the correct share of the oil revenues as NCP had played some tactical strategies in auditing. It is a fact supported by the reality that the ruling National Congress Party was too adamant about in equal division of two key ministries of Finance and that of Energy with its partner the SPLM to create an atmosphere of a fair grand collision in ushering a new political dispensation and reconciliation between the two former enemies bound together by peace.

On 23rd July this year, the Central Bank of Sudan took a lonely stance to terminate payment of South in hard currency as spelled out in Wealth Sharing Protocol and took an uninformed turn by giving the South Sudanese Pounds SDG, a currency that has no wider international recognition like other regional currencies circulating amongst the member countries of Common Market for South and Eastern African (COMESA), a region where the South almost depend entirely for its livelihood. 

The CPA opens South Sudan to Eastern African communities as a new virgin land that ought exploration for a possible trade with the aim that hard currency would be used besides local one within. In addition to that former guerilla army, Sudan People Liberation Army SPLA does its military procurement in hard currency because nobody can accept a fair trade exchange deal worth a billion in SDG except in dollars. 

The National Congress Party has been accusing the SPLA procurement department of purchasing heavy weapons since the formation of the government of Southern Sudan, saying that it is a direct violation of the CPA from the side of the SPLM South ruling party, however, both the SPLM and SPLA had been vocal enough in denying such baseless allegations. 

This move is deemed by analysts as a strategy to disarm the SPLA and GoSS from their ambitious military buildup for possible war in case the worse comes to worst and to threaten the dream of an independent nation SPLM is advocating for. Give them SDG and we will see where they will go with it. Two partners have been trading several accusations of each other massing up troops along the north-south border now pending demarcation. 

Recently the National Congress Party also echoed it on wider media that SPLA has purchased warplanes and other sophisticated military hardware and SPLA department of information consistently reiterated their position that the NCP is day dreaming because SPLA or government of Southern Sudan has no enough money to do such procurement. 

Secondly, this Thomas money gotten from oil share goes for salaries and other developmental projects of health, education and water as South Sudan had no any single functioning institution which was spared by 20 years war. Food, Roads and other infrastructures are not tackled as money is indeed insufficient given the level of poverty and destitute in this war devastated region of the country. 

This action by the Central Bank of Sudan has seriously maimed the economy of Bank of Southern Sudan to sustain and supply other local foreign bureaus operating, besides GoSS catering for its imports as South Sudan depends on imported commodities. In a press conference held by the GoSS Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Mr. David Deng Athorbei, he said the decision by the Central Bank of Sudan has caused a sharp fall in Sudanese Pounds against the dollar from 2.42 to 3.10 SDG per dollar in the recent days and it is likely to persist unless the bank reverses its decision. 

The move to paid BoSS in local currency is not the first of its kind because in June 2008 the bank had paid in SDG but through political intervention and other external pressure the case was put to rest and payment resumes normalcy as agreed in the CPA. With three states of Darfur on frying pan in which different rebel factions talking differing voices of either possible self determination of the black African region forming their own separate administration units, the South Sudan here also threatening in support of other two contested states of Southern Kordofan and South Blue Nile in their popular consultations where they would also determine their fates like what other Africans are doing in this large politically rotten nation. 

As common talks could be amongst northern politicians and laymen that the South is unable to manage its own affairs, Sudan is a first failed entity in managing its affairs and this is symbolizes by rampant wars and sufferings anywhere in the Sudan. According to me, failure in the South was a result of failure in the center of Sudan. Ruling cliques if not political forces which have governed in the Sudan failed the Sudan resulting into a failed everybody in the country. 

In fact, isn’t the South that has failed but Sudan, in the sense that after politicians in north failed shortage of diagnosing the problem of country, it was called problem of the South until when the late SPLM/A founder and chairman Dr. John Garang De Mabior came and made it clear that it is not the problem of the South but north because it is the north which is adamant on divisive Islamic Sharia laws. 

Today foreign exchange situation is in comma in sick bed in South Sudan given that the region depends on imports through private and international banks. This ailing economy would jeopardize the successful conduct of the referendum, the last phase of the CPA which is deemed most important of all the other chapters that were troublesomely put to rest. 

Indeed this move by the Central Bank of the Sudan has two facets of which the first one is to deny both SPLA and GoSS security control of the South by creating economic worrying scenarios of likely civil unrest apart from military logistics that would possibly be used against them in case things fuck at the last minute of the referendum. In fact, SPLA and Sudan Arm Forces SAF are at equal arm show thus, last-minute procurement would either alter or determine the last victory of the dreamed second war between the two ancient and traditional enemies. 

 Lastly, the move is meant to aggress the South to quickly call for unilateral declaration of the South without waiting the final click of the clock so that NCP uses it as a ticket of invading the South this time because SAF military think tanks believed that the next war would only last for 21 days unlike the previous war which took 21 years and apart from it being a clever strategy of causing mayhems before or amidst the conduct and after the referendum in order to discredit the outcome leading to a lack of international recognition. 

This last NCP strategy is also realistic if it combines with the current unrest in some parts in the South like the one in Jonglei and Unity state. Another accelerator to these could be heightening cattle rustling among the Dinkas and Nuers plus other micro natural chaos from ill-wishers whose motives and mission is to see no birth of a new nation on the map of Africa. 

Will South Sudan be a corruption free state?

By Atok Dan Baguoot 

“True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else”, Clarence Darrow. Since the establishment of the modern state, the fight against corruption after liberation wars was a subsequent monster whose war almost defeated human beings in a quest for a just and fair system where resources could trickle down to projects meant for national prosperity and progress. 

It has turned three years now since the president of the government of Southern Sudan General Salva Kiir Mayardit made a public announcement declaring Southern Sudan as a corruption-free region with the hope that since Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and Army SPLM/A is a mass movement born amongst the oppressed to address national odds which had rocked the Sudanese state immediately after independence from British. 

His Excellence as the president of the government of Southern Sudan General Mayardit was never wrong because he had wanted to tell the marginalized Sudanese and other rivaling political forces that SPLM had a just cause and would live to the core values that let it champion a costly war without resources. Oppressed masses responded to SPLM’s calls for liberation war without hints. Citizens of great importance perished on the battlefields to have a free state free from all odds including corruption because not even a single person is ever taken to answer for mismanagement of the national treasury but SPLM wanted to bring it into the record. 

Corruption, according to its meaning is a very tough enemy that has no definite shape or front where we can send in the well trained and professional army to combat and after that, we summon the Chief of General Staff (COGS) to tell us how far he progresses with the war. It is a war of intuition and self-confidence. It is supposed to start in our houses before the front is transcended to neighborhoods and finally to national theatres. 

Probably the best and most talented military man in uniform can lose to such a fight despite the fact that he/she had credible military excellences because forces of such an enemy are within your ranks and files. Fine, one could probably ask what corruption “Free State” means in accordance with its application in our daily today situation. 

Since the president made this rare and bold public declaration, members of the public who don’t have access to avenues of corruption have put on their titanic glass lenses watching to see if some of the big fishes would be trapped by this presidential message. It is still none. 

It is yet unrealized that mountains of money were recovered from ghost names in the fight by the only ministry whose head and deputy are women and that is the Ministry of Labour nurse by Madam Awut Deng Acuil and Rebecca Joshua Okwachi. These two great women first won the gold model in the fight and another winner could be the Mr. David Athorbei of finance and planning who rescued our money it was tempered in the Dura saga. He has won himself a twin’s model. 

A magnitude of war is normally remembered well when it has claimed senior commanders of the battle likewise, the war against corruption would one time reach its climax after it shifted gears from small fish to a big one. Free corruption state is sometimes ambiguous in the sense that some analysts can interpret it either positively or negatively depending on how one wishes because of the literal meaning of the text. 

Interpretations like free to be corrupt or free from corruption could possibly be all exploited unless the impact is critically realized through the arrest, detention, and trial of suspects otherwise, stereotype of rare occurrence like when the first CPA Minister of Finance and Planning in the government of Southern Sudan was removed from the cell. After payroll cleansing, another competent avenue of corruption is the house rent allowance which was approved by the office of the president after it had seen the deplorable condition under which government employees were undergoing. 

Of course, few houses were occupied by senior directors and few other subordinates leaving huge chunks roaming about given that Juba lacks accommodation of all sorts. As a matter of sympathy from our president, a certain amount of money was allocated to those affected by the housing problem apart from the group that occupied government houses. A tough war that requires a tough mediator emerges from those directors who occupied public houses that they should be part of that money when indeed it was intended for those who were renting on their own. If such a request is given a go through then they automatically become double beneficiaries. 

In plain language, it is corruption in administrative uniform. Tolerate it or be intolerant. Some ministries are now battling with their directors who formerly occupied those houses and wanted to be given such money on top in the name that they machine the government hence, anything to do with government is to be decided by them. The government needs to watch out for such opportunists otherwise they would wish to do their best through a tactical means of corruption coated with the sugar of privilege.