Opinion,
By Deng Vanang,
July 22, 2018(Nyamilepedia) — Kiir ascended to power by cheer act of default and continues to do so successfully thirteen years later since 2005.
Secret behind stranglehold on power is playing off one enemy against another, while negotiating deals he doesn’t intend to keep till death do him part in an increasingly dysfunctional Presidency.
A tailored trick his key opponents adamantly refused to come to terms with at their own peril.
Following are the detailed accounts on how President Kiir has dumfounded pundits with survival tricks callously hidden in his cowboy hat by pulling one after another to cheat political demise and live for unexpected longer years in palatial J1 Palace.
A replica of rare feat he pulled up during the liberation years, when he cleverly recoiled under John Garang the enlightened dictator as his no nonsense colleagues stood up against the feared guerilla leader only to be devoured, leaving him standing up alone to be counted and wittingly outliving Garang whose hot seat he inherited effortlessly.
A man who attracts both ecstatic admiration and venial criticism in equal measure as a willy genius to supporters and on the contrary, a crafty self-centered schemer to opponents respectively.
The opponents who miserably missed out in action failing to spot his shrewd audacity to hang on as they naively went headlong dismissing him as a passing cloud to be cleared away by tricky intricacies of modern State governance and complexities of the world’s most complicated peace process, the CPA given his challenging academic pedigree.
Yet again, he stunned them all when he used their uncalculating minds to make CPA a roaring success, while simultaneously transforming himself into an opportunistic separatist from hardcore unionist in order to win over the more dominant separatist publics obsessed with independence euphoria.
With sole intention to rob his number two of Southern Presidency during mid-term election of 2010 that eventually helped him birth the once autonomous region into a sovereign State it is today.
After he was done with external Northern foes, Kiir turned in the heat and railroaded the festering Garang’s blue eye boys alongside their foster mum waiting desperately in the wings to scavenge on his Presidency laid to ruins by unprecedented negative ethnicity pitting ethnic groups against one another, run amok corruption and impoverishing economic policies.
Went on to press trumped up coup charges against his number two hoping to replace him come the slated 2015 first ever post-independence democratic polls after the latter refused to accept his boardroom deal to hand him Presidency in 2020.
Turned his regional allies in the heady days of deadly conflict into peacemakers mediating between him and his erstwhile Deputy culminating in 2015 peace deal that lured the latter back under his lock and key.
But whom he had to throw off the moving Presidential band wagon when previously moribund economy received a clean bill of health, resulting in the backlash of a bloody encounter in 2016.
Dethroned his chief of general staff turned self-declared King Paul at the height of the latter’s dangerously wielded de facto presidency into an imprisonment before exiling him at his own mercy in late 2017.
With former Deputy in Presidency tittering between the graveyard at home and detention abroad as he belatedly struggles to retain the seat he despised in 2013 against 2020 boardroom power handover deal he rejected out of hand.
But which today doesn’t only look too good to be true if he were to travel back in time to seize the opportunity he turned down without the luxury of a second thought, but also deprives him of rallying agenda of change he once wielded powerfully in his power base.
Even though the deal was not cast in stone and likely to be violated as it is shown in wheeler-dealer tactics currently shaping Kiir’s Presidency at J1 as the country he founded sinks ever deeper and deeper around him into an abysmal hole each and every passing day.
In addition to his lack of exhibiting any sign of slowing down to fool both the indecisive world and self-effacing opponents through endless extensions of Presidential term, courtesy of a blend of stage managed bloody military coups and strong headedness just to see off unwinnable elections.
Such unique accomplishment to behold is all possible due to myriad of friendly backings.
One being unwavering support from a handful IGAD’s banana republics that shore up his sinking ship against mild, but still lingering opponents and the friendly mediating regional body, IGAD that keeps him in every deal he strikes as president with opposition blocs.
The regional body similarly renders the dilapidating blanket and targeted sanctions imposed on individuals, property, oil and arms non-effectual to bear on his blood thirsty regime.
And needless to remind anybody of the usually declared ceasefire agreements he reluctantly signs as none other than mere public relation exercise to fool the world, while he inadvertently continues with illegal extensions of Presidential term he is mindless of their consequences till Kingdom come.
Deng Vanang is the Secretary for Information, Public Relations and Spokesperson for Federal Democratic Party/South Sudan Armed Forces, FDP/SSAF. Cordially reachable at: dvanang@gmail.com
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