Jonglei, Where KUCHA? Is Punctuated With A Question Mark As CHAGOR! With An Exclamation Mark
By Jon Pen de Ngong
According to the hot exchange of ‘letters of cancellation and conciliation’ of wrestling between Jonglei and Central Equatoria states, the lead question to indirectly and creatively answer here is: why the deputy and his governor are busy ‘governoring’ around with cultural activities that are the sole business of the community wrestling and dancing associations that be, and the ministries of youth, culture and sports for that matter.
In this piece of mine for my own peace of mind, I am not dramatizing the petty politics, excuse me, I am only grammatizing the pretty poly-tricks by our sort of enemies-in-one in our state…the SPLM and her sisters.
Governor ‘Deny’ Chagor and his deputy ‘Anti-pass’ Kucha have some sort of a nomenclature (naming system) that is so antagonistic in nature. In other words, the phonetics of these names is confrontational on its own right.
So Denay (Denai) Chagor denied his deputy, Antipas Nyok Kucha, who acts as governor in his absence, the constitutional powers while he was away?
Does this exonerate Hon. Antipas from the perceived meddling in the community’s social affairs? No! It is the wrestling associations that write and accepts each other’s challenges (tui or löth), so the state government has no mandate to dilly-dally in cancelling or convening any social events without a unanimous agreement of the social groups concerned.
What the state can just do is advise the parties concerned on security or other grounds, then they make their independent decisions and take their own actions. If this is not yet understandable, then let us simplify it further thus. For a music or wrestling concert, or any other similar social or commercial event, the organizers have their final say in terms of venue, date, participants, costs, etc. They can only notify the police in accordance with the law.
Therefore, was Gov. Denai Jock Chagor right to overturn his deputy’s decision, either? No, again! Neither the governor nor the deputy has to be answerable to issues with the morality or suitability of any social or commercial event in town. As event managers, our close partners are the police, not even the National Security, in the case of permission and provision of physical security.
Of course, any NSS operatives can just attend the event like any other ordinary citizens, since their roles are not to mount guards at events but to collect relevant information for other purposes.
This must be emphasized because some NSS, Mi, SSPDF, etc. officers do always overstep their mandate. This naughty habit of raising up ID cards to scare the hell out of local organizers for undeserved gate access or seating respect is very unbecoming of that group’s conduct.
Back to the coincidentally linguistic influence in the administrative stand off between the Jonglei’s chief and his deputy, that is mischief, as Capt. Mabior would put it.
Well, there are other facts and factors triggering such a political bad blood between these leaders. One is party politics. Habitually, the SPLM sees their deputies in states controlled by the opposition parties as the ones still calling the shots. Welle!
But, it’s believed, this is the case with Hon. Antipas who develops such an antipathy on his senior, who is SSOA’s own (South Sudan Opposition Alliance) torchbearer in Jonglei State.
Anyhow, this fact based on inferiority complex, may also be responsible for lack of empathy (getting into his deputy’s shoes) by Chagor (which names sounds in Nuer like: ‘I don’t want or accept that’) on Hon. ‘Kucha’, which sounds in Dinka like: So ‘you don’t know me’? Hence the indirect interpretation of the tug-of-war game between the two.
All in all, when it comes to decisions in organizing or disorganizing private commercial or social event functions, tell those state governors and their entourage, “Please, sit down!” Period!
By the way, I expected these (our) Jonglei ‘governors’ to write interstate rebuttals to the extremely provocative and propagandistic hate letters from the like of Governor Louis Lobong Lojore, whose language seems to justify why those mothers and kids had to be slaughtered in a cold-blooded gun carnage by the barbarians who use his Eastern Equatoria State as a launchpad, just because they are ‘land grabbers’ or transhumants from Bor.
Instead, we saw community association leaders writing and going alongside the national officials to the scene of the massacre, while the Jonglei’s top notch were wrestling over the community wrestling associations’ responsibilities. What an off-scene, if not obscene, reversal of roles!
For your information (FYI), this is not the first instance whereby our Peace-brought governor has ‘denaid’ (past tense of ‘denay’?) on his deputy’s duties, or the deputy has ‘anti-passed’ (obstructed or insubordinated) his boss’s directives… either by taking unilateral decisions or by bypassing his administrative directives. What are they teaching us from behind them?
Finally, may I just remind Hon. Chagor and Hon. Kucha to drop their punctuation marks (emotional exaggerations) and heed to their boss, lest he hears their paper-based noises and take his usual evening action (God forbid), the Dekiiree! I mean the duo must again read and reread the president’s 2021 administrative circular, Viz:
“This letter calls upon all members of the state executives to work together as one team to implement the peace agreement and to deliver services you are able to afford to our people.” President Gen. Salva Kiir Mayardit issued this order on the 12th of April in 2021.
“You must operate as members of one government, respect yourselves and protocols irrespective of your political affiliation.” Ku thök wël!
FOOTNOTE:
As for those politicizing the ethnicity or ethnicizing the politicity of this wrestling match i.e. running around with it on tribal, sectional or personal interests, shame on you! Same on me if I had done so in this opinion article. Else, have I?
Source: For this and more of such blogs by the same writer, click on: http://www.weakleak.wordpress.com
