BREAKING NEWS: South Sudan Backtracking on The Revitalized Peace Agreement

March 30, 2020 News, Newsbeat

South Sudan arch rivals, President Salva Kiir Mayardit and his former deputy, Dr. Riek Machar Teny, leader of the SPLM/A in Opposition gazing at each other’s eyes during peace process in Khartoum in 2018(Photo credit: shared/unknown)

March 30, 2020(SSNN) — After holding a deadlock on the number and boundaries of states for 18 months following the signing of the Revitalized Agreement of the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan(R-ARCISS) on September 12, 2018 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, South Sudan President, Salva Kiir Mayardit, reverted the country back to 10 + States on February 14, 2020.

The long awaited decision put many smiles on faces of South Sudanese, friends and sympathizers but within less than one month, president Kiir has taken four steps backwards leaving big security vacuums.

While running the country without state governors for 45 days, president Salva Kiir is busy issuing presidential decrees that focus mostly on security and the state house – leaving doubts if peace is still holding.

Among the presidential decrees, issued recently, president Kiir has squashed the NPTC that was responsible for security arrangement and appointed a new body led by his presidential advisor on security, Hon. Tut Kew Gatluak,

President Kiir has also stopped the training of the unified army due to coronavirus leaving fears on what shall become of the opposition party leaders like Dr. Riek Machar that count on the security arrangement.

In addition to shutting down the training of security forces, army and police and delayed appointment of governors, the government delegation led by Michael Makuei Lueth and the SPLM/A-IO have reached a new deadlock on the number and allocation of states.

According to Michael Makuei Lueth, the government cannot divide states 50/50 with the opposition, demanding that the SPLM/A-IO must give up one state and take only two.

“The government is saying no, according to the agreement, we have 55%, you have 45%. So we can’t divide them 50/50 because 55 is not equivalent to 45. We are taking six and you the opposition are taking four” Hon. Makuei continued.

“We are taking six because we are entitled for that, we are the leading party in this agreement. IO will take two, SSOA will take one and OPP will take one, that is four” He continued.

The SPLM/A-IO and the NDM have argued in favor of the SPLM/A-IO taking three states and leave SPLM-IG with 5 states only.

“Article 1.16.1 clearly specifies the percentage share of each Party as: 55%, 27%, 10% and 8% for the I-TGoNU, SPLM/A-IO, SSOA and OPP, respectively. This translates into 5.5, 2.7, 1 and 0.8 to the Parties in the above order. The rule of rounding up fractions dictates that: (a) any fraction of or above 0.5 qualifies for rounding up to one subject to (b) if more than one fraction qualify for rounding up to one, the fractions are taken in the order of magnitude, with the highest qualifying before the lowest. In this case, 0.8 and 0.7 qualify to be rounded up to one before 0.5. Therefore, the allocation should be: 5, 3, 1 and 1 for the I-TGoNU, the SPLM/A-IO, SSOA and OPP, respectively.” Dr. Lam Akol explains.

Although the vice presidents and the cabinet ministers have been sworn in, the future remains uncertain for the new country.

Without appointment of state governors, national RTLA and without training of a unified army, South Sudanese begin to panic.

Due to many abrupt changes that sometimes escade to war, many citizens have lost trust in President Salva Kiir leadership to the extent that if he delays important decisions for a week or two, citizens become worried.