Some cabinet ministers have accused their colleagues in the ruling party, SPLM, of schemes to derail the regime of Western Equatoria State (WES) Governor, Gen. Alfred Futuyo Karaba. 

Earlier in December, some ministers wrote a position paper in which they accused the governor of misappropriating over SSP70 million as well as denying the state civil servants’ salaries for months including the proposed new salary scales.

“Hon. Governor to immediately refund the embezzled South SSP72, 000,000 which he has used for his personal use,” partly read the position paper dated December 9 and signed by eight ministers on the ticket of the SPLM.

It added, “With all the amount of public insults, humiliations and intimidation by the honourable governor to the constitutional post holders, we are calling upon the honourable governor to publicly apologise to us through the public media to clear our names before the public.”

However, in a statement countering the position paper, some cabinet ministers from SPLM-IO and South Sudan Opposition Alliance (SSOA) accused their colleagues of trying to topple the governor’s leadership.

“The position paper doesn’t represent the whole of the cabinet ministers as alleged, instead, it only reflects the will of a few individuals from the SPLM party who are on daily political wrangles as usual.”

“The objective to have reached such a decision by few minsters from the SPLM party wasn’t shared widely among the cabinet members, as misinformed in the position paper. In fact, they only falsely accused the governor of a trial once again after they tried all possible means to remove him from the governorship,” they said in a statement.

“We also wanted to state that their false accusation that civil servants and other constitutional post holders haven’t received their salaries is not true, it’s only those who signed the position paper who failed to receive their salaries,” it continued.