President Salva Kiir and his own spokesman have made contradictory statements on the date of signature of South Sudan’s three media bills, raising questions about when the bills came into force and whether the correct versions are in circulation.

Kiir wrote that he signed the bills on 9 December 2013 but his own spokesman said they were signed nine months later.

Presidential Press Secretary Ateny Wek said at a press conference on 9 September 2014 that the bills were signed “one hour ago.” He said, “the president put signature one hour ago, the law is in place now.”

However, Kiir himself dated his signature 9 December 2013, according to the signed version of the bills provided to AMDISS, the Association for Media Development in South Sudan.

The three bills are the Media Authority Act, the Broadcasting Corporation Act and the Right of Access to Information Act. On all of them, Kiir dated his signature of assent 9 December 2013.

The text above the signature reads, “Signed under my hand in Juba, this 9th day of the Month of Dec. in the Year 2013,” with the month and day handwritten by Kiir.

Although the text says that the bills were signed “in Juba,” newspaper records show that Salva Kiir actually traveled to South Africa on the morning of 9 December, in order to attend Nelson Mandela’s funeral.

The president’s spokesman on that day also cited a “lack of time” for the president to hold a press conference on the internal SPLM crisis, owing to his travel schedule.

It is therefore unclear how the president could have signed the bills “in Juba” on that date, or, even if he did, why this was kept secret until nine months later.

The bills were initially passed in July 2013, but the president withheld his assent and asked the parliament to make some changes. These changes were adopted and a revised version passed by parliament in early December 2013.

The bills then disappeared sometime after being passed by parliament, according to government officials. Ateny Wek has acknowledged that they “went missing” but says they were later rediscovered and denies that they were tampered with.

None of the pages of the scanned text of the bills obtained by AMDISS bear the signature of either the Clerk of the Assembly or the Speaker of the Assembly.

Radio Tamazuj contacted the office of Ateny Wek to provide him with an opportunity to comment for this article, but he declined to respond.

Related coverage:

S. Sudan presidency unclear on whether media bills in force (12 Sept.)

No confirmation of South Sudan media bills signing (9 Sept.)