South Sudan’s Machar hints at postponement of 2023 election

JUBA – South Sudan’s First Vice President and leader of the main opposition group, Sudan People’s Liberation Army in Opposition (SPLA-IO), Dr. Riek Machar, has said elections slated for 2023 would be impossible without the graduation of a unified army  that would take charge of security during the polls.

According to the 2018 peace deal, the unified forces – composed of oppositions and government forces – were supposed to be graduated before the end of the pre-transitional period which ended in February 2020 with the appointment of Dr. Machar as First Vice President.

The forces were to take charge of security during the ongoing transitional period in the country.

The graduation and unification of the army have been delayed with government officials citing lack of funding and existing arms embargo imposed by the United Nations Security Council as an obstacle which resulted in lack of arms for graduating the unified army.

Speaking during the opening session of the 4^th SPLM-IO National Liberation Council meeting in Juba this morning, Machar said implementation of security arrangements is critical for credible and transparent elections.

“People talk of elections but there are prerequisites for elections to be conducted because you want free, fair, and credible elections. If you don’t have unified forces, then you don’t have security for elections. There is debate these days, can elections be conducted without unified forces, and personally I said no, you need to secure the environment in which you conduct elections,” Machar said.

Machar said elections are impossible without the unified army to secure a conducive environment for free and fair polls.

“So, for elections to be conducted the first prerequisite is you should have security, and two we have a lot of refugees, and this is our next neighbor in the south; there are more than 1.1,000 refugees in Uganda, they will need to come back,”  he said.

According to the UN Refugee Agency, there are about 4.5 million displaced people from South Sudan seeking refuge in Uganda, Kenya, Sudan, and Ethiopia.

The founding father of the SPLM-IO said the parties should repatriate the refugees and displaced persons, conduct a population census and develop a constitution before heading for elections.

“All these people if you want to conduct elections must come back and you resettle them and then you conduct elections. Also, another prerequisite for elections to be conducted is Census. We now have 550 PMs at the national assembly and the council of states is 100,” he said.

“These are arbitrary figures done to resolve the crisis but if you are to go for elections, our population let us say is 15 million, our members of parliament in national assembly can’t be 550, it would be maybe half of that number,” he added.