Gen. Gatwech orders emergency meeting, says transitional period ends in three days

JUBA – South Sudan’s former opposition chief of general staff and leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army in Opposition (SPLM/A-IO) Kitgwang faction General Simon Gatwech Dual has called for an emergency meeting of top military and  political leaders of the group saying the transitional period now ends in three days.

The revitalized peace agreement was signed by President Salva Kiir Mayardit and First Vice President Dr. Riek Machar who is also the leader of the SPLM-IO and provides for a transitional period of thirty-six month that should have started in May 2019 with a formation of a unity government.

The government was not however formed in 2019 as parties kept extending the pre-transitional period over disagreements on delayed pre-transitional tasks and would drag the formation of the Revitalized Transitional Government of National Unity (R-TGONU) to March 2020.

However, the extension of the pre-transitional period, according to regional guarantors, should not affect the deadline in which the transitional period should end. According to the agreement, elections slated for end of the transitional period should take place sixty days before the end of the transitional period which should be around March 2022.

But senior opposition and government officials now says the transitional period would end in 2023 in contrary to the timeline agreed upon by the parties during the last extension of the pre-transitional period in Ugandan in late 2019.

Speaking to Sudans Post this afternoon, the military spokesman of the SPLA-IO Kitgwang faction Brigadier General William Gatjiath Deng said General Simon Gatwech Dual has ordered for a high-level emergency meeting of the military and political leaders of the group next week to discuss end of the transitional period which he says happens in three days.

“As you know that the transitional period will end in just only three days, the Interim Chairman and Commander in Chief 1^st Lt. Gen. Simon Gatwech Dual has called for a meeting of the military and political leaders of the SPLM/SPLA (IO) next week to discuss the end of the transitional period. This meeting will take place on September 15, 2021,” General Gatjiath told Sudans Post from Magenis.

“The purpose of the meeting will be to discuss the peace agreement which is coming to an end, draft our view on the situation in the country and write to the regional body, the IGAD which mediated the revitalized peace agreement, so that we are clear on what we will do next because we cannot stand watching,” he added.