Civil society groups petition Kiir to ensure timely elections
June 10, 2013 (JUBA) – The alliance of the civil society organizations in South Sudan has urged president Salva Kiir to ensure timely conduct of the 2015 general elections as well as respect for human rights in the country.
Currently there are wide spread concerns that the 2015 general elections may be postponed or conducted in unfair and not free environment given the bumpy road the ruling SPLM is travelling on in its attempt to transform and prepare for the next elections.
The ruling party conducts its national convention every five years to confirm or elect a new leadership. The last convention was conducted in 2008 during which the incumbent chairman and president, Salva Kiir, was confirmed. Kiir took over from late John Garang upon his mysterious death in a helicopter crash in 2005.
The next convention was to be conducted in May this year, to confirm and elect a new leadership.
Basic documents, including the party constitution, manifesto, code of conduct and rules and regulations were supposed to be passed by the political bureau, national liberation council and in an extraordinary convention. This should be before the ordinary convention is convened to elect a new leadership. None of all these steps has succeeded as the party top brass are stuck on what constituted a viable transformation as the test on the chartered road indicates uneasiness.
Chairman Salva Kiir was alleged to be a failure by his most senior aides including the deputy chairman, Riek Machar, and secretary, Pagan Amum, asking him to step down, criticizing him for failing to navigate the party as the ship’s captain. They want his replacement and leave the transition to another person to correct the party’s weaknesses of “losing the direction and vision” as well as prepare for 2015 presidential elections.
Kiir has resisted and declared his intention to go for the third term as the party chairman and flag bearer for the 2015 elections.
Currently there is no political party registered by the new Republic of South Sudan. All the more than 22 political parties, including the ruling SPLM, operate using the certificate previously provided to them by Khartoum before the split of the former Sudan in 2011.
Upon the completion of the transformation process and in the passing of its basic documents, the SPLM, and the rest, would now apply for registration as legal political parties in South Sudan.
Similarly, the commission for constitutional review is behind the schedule due to lack of finance.
Human rights abuses are another concern the civil society organization petitioned president Kiir for in order to address it. Deng Athuai himself was a victim of such abuse. He was kidnapped last year by unknown gunmen from near his house in the national capital, Juba, and was tortured and left half conscious, warned to stop criticizing the government.
A political commentator, Isaiah Abraham Chan Awuol, was also assassinated right in front of his house on 5 December 2012. The investigations were being carried out, but it is not clear how they have ended up.
After their Saturday meeting with president Kiir, the secretary general of the SSCSA, Boutros Biel, said they were delivering the message to the president on such concerns.
SOUTH SUDAN JUSTICE AND HUMAN RIGHTS LEADERS HEAD TO GENEVA
A high level delegation composed of the minister of Justice, John Luk Jok, and the Chairperson of the South Sudan Human Rights Commission, Lawrence Korbandy, is heading to Geneva, to brief the United Nations on the current human rights situation in South Sudan.
Korbandy in a televised statement on the state-owned SSTV announced that they would leave on Sunday to brief the UN on the country’s position on human rights.
The human rights chief who said he met with the country’s Vice-president, Riek Machar, on Thursday, also appealed to the leadership to release some of the South Sudanese detainees that were not covered in the presidential amnesty which was meant for all those who took up arms against the government.
Currently, the former national minister and chairman of United Democratic Front (UDF) party, Peter Abdel Rahaman Sule and Maj. General Gabriel Tang-Ginye and his colleagues, are still in detention in Juba because they did not benefit from the general amnesty declared last month by the country’s president, Salva Kiir.
(ST)