S. Sudan’s constitution encourages corruption, has contradictions – defense minister

JUBA – South Sudan’s defense minister, Angelina Teny, has said that the country’s transitional constitution of 2011 which was amended in 2015 has a lot of contradictions saying it encourages corruption.

The senior government and opposition official made the remarks during a workshop on permanent constitution-making process conducted in Juba on Thursday.

“Our Transitional Constitute has a lot of contradictions. In fact, it has facilitated a number of issues in our society, one of which is corruption,” Teny said.

The minister who is also the SPLM-IO chairperson for defense and security committee pointed to the board of Central Bank as example where the governor of the central bank is the chair of the board of directors.

“Let me give you an example on how it has facilitated corruption. Take the central bank. The central bank has a board, chair of the board, and the governor of the bank. The board is supposed to be a policy making body.

”The governor is supposed to be head of the executive. Now the governor is made to be chair of the board. You can see the conflict of interest. The governor of the bank is in fact regulating himself.”

The senior government official further said the constitution should gives more powers to the governor of the central bank to set policies as head of the executive and the same with the Petroleum Commission.

“You can’t make the Minister of Petroleum to be chair of the commission. The commission is an oversight in policy making,” she said.

“We can ensure this contradiction by making right legislation. When we put the term of referral, it will determine people who will go to the commission. This will determine what the role of the commission is,” she added.