Trust deficit among peace parties ‘greatest blockage’ hampering peace implementation, warns activist

JUBA – South Sudan’s outspoken and prominent activist, Edmund Yakani, has warned that trust deficit among the parties to the revitalized peace agreement is the greatest blockage hampering the implementation process of the 2018 peace agreement.

Yakani who is the Executive Director of Community Empowerment for Progress Organization (CEPO), made the press statement following the disagreement between SPLM-IO and SPLM-IG over reforms which were supposed to be passed within the political parties act bill, but were scrapped.

In a statement, Yakani said the greatest hindrance to the full implementation of the revitalized peace agreement is the trust deficit between the party signatories to the 2018 peace agreement citing initial disagreements from the signing of the deal.

“Deficit in trust and confidence in delivering the R-ARCSS is the greatest blockage for hindering the smooth transitioning of the society from violence to peace,” Yakani said in the statement e extended to Sudans Post.

“The frictions at the beginning of the reform of the political parties act tells a lot about the hardship will be face on the way towards delivering political reforms for securing sound legislative frameworks for conduct of credible elections as proposed the R-ARCSS provisions,” he added.

The outspoken activist stressed “The peace partner’s conduct of business in the parliament is showing the public that still there is higher deficit in trust and confidence among the parties for making peace and stability prevail in the country.”

He further called “upon the parliamentarians in the national parliament to demonstrate primary responsibility for making peace prevail through smooth implementation of the R-ARCSS provisions. The moment the parliament embraces disagreements on the R-ARCSS implementation then the public will faster and sharply loss trust on R_ARCSS as a political tool for transitioning the situation from violence to peace.”