Kiir, Machar differ on elections timeline

JUBA – South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir Mayardit and his first deputy Dr. Riek Machar Teny have differed on timeline of the national elections set to take place in 2023 as provided for in the revitalized peace agreement.

According to the revitalized peace agreement signed by Kiir and Machar in Addis Ababa in September 2018, the parties shall go to elections two months before end of the three-year transitional period.

But several tasks provided for in the agreement that must precede the elections remains unimplemented, special the security arrangements – the most important provision of the deal.

Kiir, however, on several occasions has said that the elections will be conducted as planned, but gone short on if that would be the case if the transitional tasks are not implemented.

“We need to embark on peace. When we are done with the interim period in which we are in now, we shall straight away go for the elections,” Kiir said in August during an address to a function organized by the SPLM Youth League.

Last week, the South Sudanese head of state told a visiting high-level United Nations Security Council (UNSC) that the government is committed to holding elections on time and that he was expecting opposition groups to prepare.

“The coming election is supposed to be in 2023 and I expect everybody to be ready to go for election,” Kiir told the delegation during a meeting conducted at the state house,” he said.

But speaking during the opening session of the 5th Governors’ Forum in Juba on Wednesday, First Vice President Machar said elections should not be conducted unless the security sector reunification is completed.

“This transitional period is supposed to end with elections, [and] for us to have fair, free, transparent elections; we must have security forces who protect the state, its people and will not interfere in the elections’ processes. And … if we are going to go for elections, we must complete in the shortest possible time the security arrangement,” said Dr Machar.

“Some of the prerequisites for elections are: the security arrangement completed,  the refugees come back, the displaced go back to their places, you have to conduct a census as a requirement of the agreement, and you must have a permanent constitution,” he added.

The South Sudanese first deputy president said “The security arrangement, which is the backbone of the peace agreement, we are now facing some difficulties because of the non-completion of the security arrangement. You recall the agreement divides the transitional period into pre-transitional and transitional periods.’’

“The first was eight months, we did not produce unified forces, then we extended it six months and extended again for a hundred days and we didn’t. We established the government on February 2, 2020 [when] we still have not yet produced the unified forces,” he added.

The powerful opposition chief further expressed optimism that South Sudan was now taking the initiative on its own to address the issue of the command and graduate the forces.

“We are trying to double our efforts to see that phase one of the unified forces are graduated, [but] we still have obstacles in agreeing on unified command. IGAD came in but Sudan went into crisis. Now we are trying to do it on our own hopefully if we succeed, then we will graduate from the unified forces,” he saod.