South Sudan government reshuffles six cabinet posts
July 3, 2007 (JUBA) — South Sudan’s autonomous government has been reshuffled with prominent figures removed from their posts after months of media speculation and discontent.
After a January 2005 peace deal ended Africa’s longest civil war, the former southern rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) formed a coalition government in Khartoum, took a share in the nation’s oil wealth and created the semi-autonomous government based in Juba, the southern capital.
South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir said that six ministers would be replaced.
Finance Minister Arthur Akuein Chol was formally removed from his post after being suspended to be questioned over graft allegations within the ministry in March.
Regional Cooperation Minister Barnaba Marial said Chol is on bail after being under house arrest for a period, but investigations are ongoing.
South Sudan’s Vice President Riek Machar was stripped of his additional housing and lands portfolio, a move that surprised some analysts, who thought he was “too important to touch.”
Businessmen had complained of difficulties obtaining land to begin much-needed investment in the south.
“We had everything set up, invested the money but were unable to get the land in the end and had to leave everything there,” said one northern Sudanese businessman on condition of anonymity.
Kiir doubles up as Sudan’s national First Vice President and spends much of his time in Khartoum, leaving Machar in charge in Juba. Machar has also been busy arranging and hosting Ugandan peace talks in the southern capital.
“The thinking is that it is too much for him,” said James Lemor, a journalist with the Khartoum Monitor paper. He called the presidential move “long-awaited.”
REBECCA GARANG
Rebecca Garang, the widow of SPLA’s long-time former leader John Garang who was killed two years ago in a helicopter crash, was also removed as the minister of roads and transport.
She has instead become a presidential advisor for gender and human rights.
South Sudan, which after the war has only a few kilometres of tarmac roads, has seen slow progress on building roads.
“She has been here for long, but there’s no progress. Even though companies have been here for more than a year there’s been no change even here in Juba,” said David Gai who works for the government’s humanitarian wing, “They just put concrete in the potholes”.
South Sudan’s only bridge across the river Nile in Juba town has been broken for months, with traffic only travelling one way.
Garang last month broke ranks with her party and told a Kenyan television channel that she thought her husband had been assassinated, despite a joint north-south report that the crash was an accident.
But the government said her transfer was administrative.
“The leader of the government has decided to have a small merry-go-round within the ministerial set-up and advisory set-up of the cabinet,” said Marial.
Dominic Dim Deng, a major general in the army, was appointed Minister for SPLA Affairs, replacing Kiir who had been the army’s military and ministerial head.
Members of the southern parliament have complained that without a separate minister, army spending of its lion’s share of the budget has been too opaque.
The peace deal created separate northern and southern armies, with joint units in major towns.
(Reuters)