General Malone: ​​Lawmakers took $3.5 million in bribes to pass repressive security law

General Paul Malong Awan, chairman and commander-in-chief of the South Sudanese rebel United Front/Army, on Monday alleged that the South Sudanese government, through the Internal Security Bureau (ISB) of the National Security Service (NSS), paid $3.5 million to bribe lawmakers last week to pass draconian amendments to the 2015 National Security Service Act.

Last Wednesday, after a four-hour debate, the Transitional National Legislative Assembly (TNLA) in Juba passed amendments to the 2015 National Security Service Act by 274 votes to 114, which will allow the agency to continue to arrest or detain people without a warrant. Lawmakers who voted in favor of the bill chanted slogans and danced after it was announced that they had been approved.

General Malong made these allegations in response to questions from journalists at a press conference in Nairobi on Monday called by the South Sudan Opposition Movement Alliance (SSOMA) and other opposition groups participating in the peace talks known as the Tumani Initiative in Nairobi, where they announced that they would not sign any agreement with the government until the National Security Service Act was repealed as agreed.

“We discussed the NSS for a long time, including in Naivasha, but when the government went to Juba, they sent it to the Council of Ministers, which then passed it and sent it to Parliament,” he said. “When it got there, it was a mess, and the information we got from inside was that the director-general of the NSS ISB was sitting in Parliament intimidating voters (legislators), who were not allowed to vote in secret and were instead told to line up based on whether they supported or opposed the bill, which was very dangerous.”

General Malong charged: “They say South Sudan has no money, so where did they get $3.5 million to buy (bribe) the legislators to pass and vote for the bill?”

When asked if he had hard evidence to support his claims, he said he was part of the NSA and still had many people loyal to him.

“I had many sources in that government, I was part of the National Security and Intelligence Service, and to this day I still have insiders who give me information about what is going on,” he insisted. “I recruited a lot of people, including the current director-general. So, it was not difficult for me to get information, but if you ask for documents, they will not provide any for this work.”

During the transition period of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended Sudan’s 21-year war, General Malong served as the then National Security and Intelligence Service (NSIS) Southern Regional Director, then Governor of Northern Bahr el Ghazal State and was promoted to Chief of Staff of the SPLA-Defence Force in 2014 after the outbreak of war in December 2013.

He later fell out with his onetime close ally, President Salva Kiir, and formed a rebel group that has rarely fought the SSPDF on the battlefield.