An Internews-supported FM station in Juba has pulled an article from its website after the governments of Norway, the United States and the United Kingdom denied its veracity.
The report published by Eye Radio on Monday stated that “the Troika [US, UK and Norway] has asked the interim government to fire the Minister of Finance, David Deng Athorbei and of Central Bank Governor Kornelio Koryom Mayiik if they want the west to finance TgoNU.”
The headline of the article stated, “Troika advises Kiir to fire Athorbei and Koryom.”
Subsequent press statements by representatives of the three governments denied having sent a letter to the South Sudanese government making such a request.
Eye Radio’s original article on the issue was no longer accessible on its website today. “Oops! That page can’t be found,” reads an automatic notice at the url where the article was housed.
In a separate article published Tuesday reacting to the controversy, Eye Radio blamed President Salva Kiir’s spokesman Ateny Wek for having “backtracked” on statements he had made to the station that appeared to confirm the existence of the letter.
“Mr. Ateny was first interviewed by a news reporter on Monday morning and later in the evening by the presenter of Sundown program. In the 19-minute telephone interview, he explained, in detail, having knowledge of the said letter,” Eye Radio stated.
The presidential spokesman later made a follow-up statement denying having confirmed the existence of the letter, however. “I just reacted to the question put to me by the Eye Radio’s reporter about the statement from Troika pertinent to the subject matter,” he said.
Ateny Wek is also at the centre of a recent controversy involving an op-ed article published in The New York Times whose authorship is disputed.
Eye Radio is a radio station operating in Juba and with an unclear number of listeners elsewhere in the country as well. It was originally founded as a project of Sudan Radio Service, operated by the organization EDC, but later became part of Internews organization and is now run as a national NGO, Eye Media, while still funded by USAID through Internews.
Meanwhile, information reported to Radio Tamazuj suggests that there may have been some element of truth to the original Eye Radio article, in that donor governments want financial reforms before offering bailout money to the South Sudanese national government; however, the Troika deny having written any specific request for the removal of the finance minister and central bank governor.
“The Troika and its partners remain committed to working with the Transitional Government of National Unity, and all its Ministers, to ensure a coherent approach to the economic challenges faces by South Sudan,” the UK embassy stated yesterday.