S. Sudan against Kiir’s exclusion from future leadership

October 30, 2017 (JUBA) – A South Sudanese official said the Juba regime would not accept any attempt to exclude President Salva Kiir from power without elections, saying such a move would set the ground for a bad leadership example.

“The sovereignty of this country is in the hands of the people and it is the people to decide through votes, not anybody. The current president was elected by the people and it is the people to decide again”, cabinet affairs minister, Martin Elia Lomuro said on Monday.

Kiir, also chairman of the ruling party (SPLM), defeated Lam Akol, the leader of the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement for Democratic Change (SPLM-DC), in the 2010 elections.

Deng Mawien, the presidential adviser on decentralization and intergovernmental linkage said excluding Kiir from power is “flagrant interference” in South Sudan’s internal affairs and thus unaccepted.

“This country is holding because of President Salva Kiir’s leadership and if care and caution is not taken, the kind of situation we have seen elsewhere would not have been avoided. Making a change which does not come through legitimate means amount to sudden removal of a cap from a bottle,” Mawien told Sudan Tribune.

He further added, “If it is not done with care, the pressure introduced by the sudden change [Kiir’s exclusion] will empty the content of the bottle and the objective for opening it will not have been served”.

According to the presidential aide, unity of the country and peace are paramount and forms the basic foundation for nation-building.

“These values cannot be achieved through a rush,” he explained.

In 2015, a report by the African Union Commission of inquiry into the South Sudanese conflict recommended that Kiir and those who served the government before the cabinet was dissolved in July 2013, be excluded from the country’s transitional national unity government.

Headed by ex-Nigerian leader Olusegun Obasanjo, the commission was to investigate crimes committed in South Sudan during the country’s civil war.

The report, instead suggested that an AU-appointed and United Nations-backed three-person panel should be established to oversee a five-year transition and creation of a transitional executive.

South Sudan has been embroiled in a conflict that has taken a devastating toll on its citizens. Over two million people have fled the world’s youngest nation since conflict erupted in mid-December 2013 when Kiir sacked his then deputy Riek Machar.

(ST)