A group of South Sudan civil society organizations has demanded a shorter post-transitional period roadmap, saying: “The current environment is not conducive for elections”.
This came during a meeting between seven civil society organizations with UK Special Envoy to Sudan and South Sudan, Robert Fairweather, in the capital Juba on Monday.
The transitional period began in Feb 2020, but the deal’s provisions remain largely unimplemented. Elections are scheduled to be conducted 60 days before the end of the transitional period, which is in December 2022, and yet many requisite laws are pending.
Sudan’s foreign affairs minister Ali al-Sadiq announced recently that the parties to the South Sudan peace agreement agreed to extend the transitional coalition government period.
Multiple sources said the parties agreed in principle to set the extension of the transitional period at 24 months.
Speaking to Radio Tamazuj after the meeting, Edmund Yakani, the Executive Director of the Community Empowerment for Progress Organization (CEPO), which promotes civil society values, said the civil society demands an extension of the transitional coalition government for a period not exceeding 18 months, to be counted after February 2023.
“The only option we have now is to extend the current transitional period because the environment is not conducive for free and fair elections before February 2023. But we don’t need an undefined extension; we need a defined extension that will have clear activities and timelines,” Yakani said.
“We propose a roundtable discussion involving all the stakeholders. We want all the political parties and the other stakeholders to agree on the roadmap to implement the agreement’s provisions that remained unimplemented,” he added.
The activist appealed to the international community to put more pressure on the parties to the South Sudan peace agreement to recommit to the agreement.
“Before we reach a final agreement on the roadmap, there should be a clear plan on how government resources will be used to implement the peace agreement,” he said. “We told the envoy that the national budget under discussions in the parliament should allocate enough resources for the roadmap.”