Speaker of National Parliament, Jemma Nunu Kumba speaks during the opening of the first session of Transitional National Legislature in Juba on Monday, 30 August 2021[Photo by Awan Achiek/Sudans Post]
Speaker of National Parliament, Jemma Nunu Kumba speaks during the opening of the first session of Transitional National Legislature in Juba on Monday, 30 August 2021[Photo by Awan Achiek/Sudans Post]
JUBA – South Sudan’s Transitional National Legislative Assembly (TNLA) has established an ad hoc committee to examine the president’s speech delivered during the first joint session of the house reopening.
Deng Tiel Ayuel, chairperson of parliamentary committee on legislation and legal affairs, will lead the 23-member committee tasked with scrutinizing President Salva Kiir Mayardit’s speech of April 3, 2024.
Speaking to during a session today, the minister of parliamentary affairs Mary Nawai introduced the motion, saying Kiir’s speech addressed diverse issues including socioeconomic conditions, security, and the political landscape.
“The speech of the president declared and encouraged the citizen of this country to embark on agriculture because agriculture is the backbone of this country,” Nawai added. “The speech of the president talks about elections – that we should prepare the election.”
“With these few remarks, I move that the speech of the president be discussed in accordance with regulation 15 number 5,” she noted.
Lawmakers also approved a motion by Nawai for a vote of thanks on the president’s speech. Traditionally, the legislature sends the president’s speech to a select committee for discussion.
Parliament’s speaker John Agany said, “The speech of the president has already been tabled today and the Rt. Speaker Jemma Nunu Kumba has submitted it to the newly formed TNLA ad hoc committee to discuss, scrutinize the president’s speech.”
“And on that regard, it will become the policy framework which will be used by the government especially [in the areas of] security, food security which the president mentioned clearly that we should have agriculture as [the] backbone,” he added.
Agany stressed that parliament will ensure the president’s speech becomes a workable framework for the government.
“We will ask all the sectors, the government institutions, that we must be following exactly what the president has voiced out – we need peace in the country, and we need to be in harmony and also need to put food on the table,” he said.
The select committee will analyze the document for the next seven to fourteen days before reporting back to the national legislature for approval and its adoption as a guiding document for the government.
