President Salva Kiir Mayardit on Tuesday evening appointed Angelina Teny as the new Minister of Interior.
In a decree read on the South Sudan Broadcasting Cooperation, Kiir also relieved Deputy Interior Minister Peter Puok Koang and replaced him with Marial Gumke.
In March, Kiir fired Teny, who is also Machar’s wife, from the ministerial docket at the Ministry of Defense and Veteran Affairs and also sacked the then Interior Minister Mahmoud Solomon in a presidential order.
The president, after relieving Teny in March, handed the defense ministry to his party, SPLM, a portfolio which, under the terms of the agreement, is meant to be appointed by Dr. Machar’s party.
In a swap, Kiir gave Machar’s party the interior ministry.
“The switch is unilateral and a new cycle of violating the revitalized agreement,” Puok Both Baluang, Machar’s spokesperson said at the time.
Kiir and Machar’s forces and other armed groups and political parties signed a peace agreement in 2018 that ended five years of civil war that killed an estimated 400,000 people and prompted a massive refugee crisis.
The implementation of the revitalized peace agreement has however been sluggish.
It is however not yet clear if Kiir and Machar reached an amicable agreement to swap the two ministries and appoint Teny as interior minister.