The Keliko community of Morobo County in Central Equatoria State has rejected the appointment of Afekuru Animu Rasasi as a Member of Parliament representing Lujule Payam in the revitalized national legislative assembly.
President Salva Kiir recently reconstituted and appointed 550 members of parliament drawn from several political parties as provided in the revitalized peace agreement.
The appointment of Afekuru as a member of parliament representing Morobo County has drawn mixed reactions and public debates across social media platforms.
A press release signed by Agele Simon, the chairperson of the Morobo community, said that the Keliko community has no knowledge and historical background of the appointed lawmaker.
The statement added that after a thorough investigation, it turned out that Afekuru illegally obtained a South Sudanese national Identity card in 2014 as someone who purportedly hailed from the Keliko tribe of Lujule Payam.
“She is a national MP who claims to be hailing from Morobo, Lujule exactly, and of course we have been doing consultations here and there and we discovered that she is not existing in any of our clans in Keliko,” Agele told Radio Tamazuj. “So as the youth of Morobo and the Keliko community we are denying her. We do not know her. She is not from us. We do not have anyone of that kind from the two Keliko clans. She is not from us.”
The community members demanded the directorate of the civil registry, nationality, passport, and immigration in the ministry of interior to revoke Afekuru's South Sudan national identity card in the name of the Keliko tribe.
The embattled Afekuru was nominated to parliament on the ticket of the umbrella group, Other Political Parties (OPP).
Albino Akol, the spokesman of the OPP interestingly distanced his group from the issue and accused Peter Mayen Majongdit, the leader of the OPP, of being behind the nomination of Afekuru as a member of parliament under his People’s Liberal Party.
“The rest of OPP does not know who nominated that lady to be in the parliament and it is good that the community has come out that the lady does not belong to them and she is a foreigner,” Akol said. “Her going to the parliament is not our responsibility, but one person called Honorable Peter Mayen who nominated her. The media needs to find out how this lady came to the parliament moreover she is not from South Sudan.”
For his part, Peter Mayen, leader of the Other Political Parties, confirmed that Afekuru was nominated by the Central Equatoria State women league under the OPP party list.
He said the OPP leaders have received complaints from the local community and the leadership has decided to suspend her name from the list until the investigation on how she obtained the nationality is completed.
“Her ticket came from the PLP women list in Central Equatoria and she claimed she belongs to Morobo County and that is what I got from my database. We have received complaints from the grassroots, we are yet to come up with a position to find out if that is true or not and she is also tasked to produce documentation because the major issue here is her nationality," Mayen said. "The party leaders have also decided to buy enough time to do a check on due diligence. As a chairman, I had no power to hold her name for appointment as provided by the women coalition on the ground.”
Radio Tamazuj could not reach Afekuru Animu Rasasi for comments on the matter.
In 2018, she was unexpectedly fired by the office of the country’s first vice president Taban Deng after investigations carried out by media reports exposed that she was a foreigner.