Posts by southsudannews

By Justin Ambago Ramba

May 2, 2010 (SSNA) — It is one thing to talk about injustice and it is another to be a direct victim of it. The same goes with how different it is to hear about it as opposed to not only experience it but in fact to live under it. Such is the experience of a big portion of the people of Sudan in general and the south Sudanese in particular.

Sudan recently concluded a general election that saw the re-election of incumbent president Omer al Bashir at the national level and Salvatore Kiir Mayardit in the South. The polls however being the first to involve many parties since 1986, it has already suffered incredibility and was declared by US and European Union as fraudulent and below the international standards.

In South Sudan where the population is expected to vote in another elections (plebiscite), where they are expected to overwhelmingly choose to secede from the Arab north, the extreme levels of harassment, intimidation, fraud, and vote grabbing exercised by the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) during the conduct of the elections have left behind a huge sense of injustices whose magnitude can only be better expressed by the immediate victims themselves and their frustrated supporters.

Although at the end of the day we are supposed to end up with only one winner for every post contested in this elections, and we keep on asking the losers to accept defeat in a civilized way, yet such messages are not to be accepted to easily go well in the post elections south Sudan, given the massive board-day light vote grabbing, “nyakama” witnessed in almost every inch of this territory.

South Sudan has a good number of opposition parties, and in the bottom line they overwhelmingly seem to agree on one important thing and that is the secession of the South to form an independent country that will become Africa’s newest state come January 2011. On the other hand the dominant SPLM which is principally a unionist party, has always called for a united Sudan, but on new basis , assumedly a secular state, a view not shared with its peace partner the Islamic, National Congress Party (NCP) of Omer Al Bashir, who is adamant to keep Islam in the centre of the Sudanese politics. This argument can only be brought to rest when finally the South votes in the referendum to be held barely eight months from now.

Dear President Elect, Salva Kiir Mayardit, April 27, 2010 (London, UK) — The United South Sudan Party (USSP) takes this opportunity to congratulate your Excellency for your victory in the…

By Justin Ambago Ramba

April 22, 2010 (SSNA) — South Sudan sadly enough continues to hit the headlines for all kinds of disasters, from hunger, thirst, disease, illiteracy, poverty, insecurity, corruption, weak governance, cattle rustling , banditry…….etc , while its leadership stands amid all these chaos completely looking blank. But you will be wrong if you think that any of these are due to natural misfortunes. No it is not the case, at least not in the remote Western Equatoria State (WES).

By all standards, nature is very generous in these parts of south Sudan. It is a region blessed with vast fertile land, ever green vegetations, and reliable rain falls. Good drainage, peace loving communities, and a very high rate of literacy and civility. This is one of God’s several heavens on earth which Man is trying to turn upside down.

Dozens of extremely bad incidents have happened in WES state which started the regrettably killings of those top police officers in Yambio few years ago, the recurrent LRA attacks, the unchecked insecurity posed by the Mbororo nomads, the assassination of the prominent female political figure late Mariam Biringi, the massacre of the school children in the aftermath of the CPA celebrations earlier this year and many others. Unfortunately as if to confirm the hidden hands of the authorities, no culprits have been brought to book.

With the above records, the ordinary person in WES takes it that, the government has either abandoned them or is even beginning to work against their very existence. People are desperate and as with anything else the way out is to have a change for the better, which they sought to achieve through the elections.

It is for the sake of change and the much need liberation from a tyrant administration that the citizens of WES went out to vote in their thousands, enduring all the harassments, intimidations, and threats of bodily harm posed by the security and police personnel throughout the voting period.

Many also had to endure the inconveniences created by the National Elections Commission’s (NEC) poor work, like misspelling of names, misallocation of names from the original centres of registration, long queues, thirst, exhaustion, rains, bad roads, and walking long distances on foot.

Many elderly and disabled citizens (cripples, blind etc) also took it upon themselves and challenged the hot tropical sun to reach the scattered polling stations to vote. All had one belief in mind, and it was to vote in office a new administration that can cater for their interest as opposed to those false liberators who have just over a night,  become new rulers ( Neo- Jallaba) by doing  exactly what the northern  Arabs did or even worse.

However, although the people are sure that the change that they voted for is forth coming, undoubtedly they were disturbed and angered by  the cowardly act of burning the ballot boxes which were on their way to Yambio, from Yeri in Mvolo County as well as those burnt in Yangiri, Ezo County.

The claim in the media that the burnt casted ballot papers were the works of some unknown bandits, reminds the citizens in WES of the familiar tone often used by the local authorities in statements  repeatedly issued in this targeted part of south Sudan  since 2005,  each time  the secret hand strikes.

How can unknown bandits just appear out of the blue on a main road between Mundri and Maridi at a time when roads in WES were closed immediately following the last day of the polls? In Yambio itself people were banned from either driving cars or riding motorbikes in the streets. Soldiers were eventually deployed all over the state.

Anyway if ‘unknown bandits’ is another word for ‘those cowards’, then let it be. Otherwise even without the least of finger pointing, the locals have already reached their verdicts. Nobody in their right state of mind can believe this cheap ‘whitewash’ story. Can anybody explain the miracle, how the so-called ‘unknown bandits, spared the three people on the truck? Here is a scenario where a policeman, the truck driver and the intelligence personnel all managed to escape the funny ordeal alive and completely unharmed.  If it were the LRA, the overused scapegoat in WES killings, lips and ears would have been cut off or even limbs chopped.

Again to drive the point home, how on earth is it that the ballot boxes were transported on a truck whereas the whole process in its initial stages was handled by choppers? Were the UNAMIS only left with that one chopper that incidentally broke down? Why was the commissioner of Mvolo so ungenerous in providing the much need security escort for such an important and risky mission? Is this not the same commissioner who disrupted Col. Bakosoro’s campaign in the first place?

“If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side.” Orson Scott Card. By…