Opinion: The Juba- Rumbek Highway: the last thing the President tries to build a legacy

June 6, 2020 Newsbeat, Opinions, Politics

By Bor Gatwech Kuany,

South Sudan’s Jubek-Bhar el Ghazal road that was washed away from flood on May 22, 2020(Photo credit: supplied)

June 5, 2020(SSNN) — After signing the agreement in 2018, the President was invited by his Chinese counterpart for state visit a head of 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation where he managed to meet with Chinese political and business leaders. During that visit, the President and his team managed to sign bilateral agreements in such areas as infrastructure and agriculture, and to encourage more Chinese enterprises to participate in the country’s economic and social development.
One of the key project that the President had in mind was road construction to connect our ten states.The President, then, approached Chinese companies such as Shandong High Speed Company etc to come and build our road.

Since 2005 when South Sudan started self rule from the Sudan, the country got billions of dollars from oil proceeds. Millions of dollars are appropriated by the parliament in each financial year to infrastructure projects specially the badly needed road construction. But none is implemented . The pave road we have, Nimule Highway, that connects us with Uganda was done by outside funding. Many road and highway projects have been planned but miserably failed before or after they could kickoff. This is due to mismanagement of resources by everyone.

Recently, the President came with an idea on how he could reverse the situation. This time, he is really unhappy by seeing South Sudan with no roads until today for the last ten years with self rule while getting billions of dollars each year from the oil. Last time, people in various institutions end up abusing their responsibility and power bestowed upon them by the constitution. And he can only just dismiss them and bring new people. But then, the new people also eat the money again and so on and so on. After having been frustrated with this rampant corruption, he wanted to do two things:
1. Oil for Road approach: build our roads using the oil itself before it become gurush. May be this will minimize gurush eating habit he sees with his appointees.
2. Bring this road construction to his desk so he can supervise it closely.

With recent washing away of the Juba-Rumbek highway, a product of the above mentioned strategy of the President, by the first rain of the season, the President again got stranded on what he could do to build small thing at least people could talk about in the next one hundred years by another generation.

For him, he thought if he can use oil not the money to build the road, then no one could drink the oil because the oil will be directly taken by the Chinese contractors and there will be no exchanges of money in between. But he didn’t know that people can even make a deal to follow the oil in Chinese land and drink it from there.
And that if things are supervised by his office, then it is easy to catch the thieves. But the President found that even people on his desk can even change documents and show him different things all together.

Mr. President, the problem is not that we in government are allergic to cash alone and not that we can’t be caught stealing. The problem in your administration is that you only dismiss thieves, you don’t arrest them. You are making all of us to be waiting to steal, after all what one looses is the job but eventually you go home with the whole money of South Sudan. With such situation, each one of us will be waiting for your appointment so we become rich, but your legacy will never be there your excellency. Arrest people after you dismiss them so what they do will never be done by their successors.

In fact those whom you have dismissed after having stolen a lot of money could have the capacity to use the money they got to mobilize the public to lobby you to come back to the government, or stage a cough to topple you. That might be the reason why your government is always dominated by old officials. They are very famous over there in the villages due to the loots. But remember that people of South Sudan are watching and recording. They will eventually judge you on what you do to their physical environment and their lives not on mercy you have on your colleagues or appointees.

The Juba-Rumbek highway or even a road connecting any villages in South Sudan will never be built if you don’t change your style of forgiving people who mismanaged public resources. Don’t forgive them because the money they mismanaged don’t belong to you. It is money for the people of South Sudan. The Juba-Rumbek highway is one of the things that can be your legacy.

The author is an MP in national Parliament in Juba, South Sudan. He can be reached through his personal email at bor.gatwech@gmail.com.

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