By Daniel Garang Deng
The communist party of South Sudan has proposed a 5-year civilian-led government headed by the prime minister and Salva Kiir as ceremonial president as an alternative for extension to prepare the country for free, fair, and credible general election.
Joseph Wol Modesto, Secretary General of the communist party said the expected inter-party dialogue on the way forward should seek consensus on forming the civilian government. He said the parties’ dialogue should be for a period of six month.
“In that six-month period, we should have reached a consensus of formation of a lean government of technocrats, from the academia and the civil service,” Wol told The Radio Community in an interview on Tuesday.
“These people who will form this government should not have taken position under the revitalized agreement. They should not even be members of parliament. They should be new people from academia, civil service.”
“They will have executive prime minister and they will also form the governments of the states and the three administrative areas.”
“President, Salva Kiir Mayardit is our symbol. We want him to remain in his position, because he is a symbol of this country, with sovereign authorities like meeting the ambassadors, but not the executive powers. He will remain a ceremonial president,” Wol stated.
According to Wol, the civilian-led government will rule for five years to create conducive environment and prepare the country for a democratic, free, fair, and credible election.
“The damage, we have caused to South Sudan needs a long time to fix it and come to a minimum level of some semblance of a government and a country So, we give them five years. We let them have these five years to work into this,” he said.
“No political party will be in this government. No party representation. It will be from academia and the civil service.”
“As for the political parties, they should go back to their constituencies and begin to build their parties by getting their members.”
Modesto also underscores the need to implement the prerequisites for elections as outlined in the 2018 revitalized peace agreement.
“You cannot go to an election without the constitution. The demarcation of the constituencies is not there. The census is not there,” he explained.
South Sudan is scheduled to hold its first-ever election on December 22, this year but slow progress of the peace deal kept government and the opposition in different position on the point election.
The SPLM in government has continued to express determination for election while the main armed SPLM in opposition has also maintain its stand that all the election conditions must first be met before the country could go to polls.
SPLM-IO proposes two years extension to allow implementation of the remaining tasks of the peace agreement but the SPLM-IG rallies for election this year.
The international community, regional bodies and civil society have called on parties to have a dialogue to break the deadlock on how to end the transitional period.
“We support dialogue. It is very important at this stage that people should actually sit down and dialogue. It should be in the form of a workshop and should take a period of about six months discussing issues related to our problems in South Sudan,” said Wol.
“We want it to be under the UNMISS and AU, we also give them the responsibility of resourcing it.”
The prerequisite for election includes the permanent constitution, security arrangement, population census, among others in the peace deal.
