Politics

US chief warns elections might not be credible in South Sudan. Here’s why

Published

9 months ago

March 9, 2024

A senior US State Department official has cautioned that unless immediate action is taken, the planned December elections in South Sudan are not likely to be a credible process due to the government’s delayed preparations.

In an interview, the official responded in the affirmative when asked if, absent immediate action, the electoral process was headed towards being a fraud.

Later this year, South Sudan will hold national elections to select a new transitional administration led by First Vice President Riek Machar and President Salva Kiir, whose forces fought each other throughout the country’s 2013–2018 civil war.

Kiir, who has been the country’s president since he led it into independence in 2011, announced in 2022 that the transitional administration would hold onto power for an additional two years, postponing the planned elections.

“I give it 50/50” about the possibility that the elections in December would go as scheduled, the official stated.

Speaking as anonymous, the official issued a warning that in the event that elections are postponed or unrest breaks out, the United States may consider using sanctions and modifying its diplomatic posture in the nation.

“If there’s either a delay or violence, I think we would look at the whole suite of options, including sanctions,” the official said.

According to the official, exploring Washington’s development assistance and other avenues of involvement are further choices.

An inquiry for comment was not immediately answered by a representative of the South Sudanese administration. According to the embassy, Peter Lord, the deputy assistant secretary for East Africa, Sudan, and South Sudan, visited the nation last week and urged the leaders to take the necessary actions to host legitimate and peaceful elections in December.

However, the US diplomat issued a warning on Friday, stating that South Sudan had failed to fulfil its obligations from two years prior, which included conducting a census, creating a constitution, and establishing all the democratic institutions required for the elections to occur.

The source went on to say that there hasn’t been a careful or comprehensive procedure because electoral institutions have just recently been constituted. According to the senior official, Kiir is in favour of the elections because they would give him credibility, but several in his immediate vicinity, including Machar, are against them because they run the risk of losing in a political struggle.

Although a 2018 agreement that put an end to a five-year conflict that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives declared South Sudan officially at peace, there are still frequent flare-ups of localised violence between competing populations.

Right now, South Sudan is in a precarious situation. Local violence between various armed groups and factions is increasing, according to UN reports.

According to UN estimates, South Sudan’s seven years of civil conflict between 2013 and 2020 resulted in 2.19 million refugees fleeing to neighbouring countries, 1.62 million internally displaced people, and 7.5 million people in need of humanitarian aid.

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Politics

Ugandan opposition politician abducted, wife says

Published

1 day ago

November 20, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

According to his wife on Wednesday, a well-known opposition leader from Uganda, Kizza Besigye was abducted during a book launch in Kenya over the weekend, taken to Uganda, and detained at a military prison in Kampala.

Despite his rejection of the results, Besigye has run against Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni four times and lost each time, claiming voting intimidation and fraud. He has been arrested several times in the past.

“I request the (government) of Uganda to release my husband Dr Kizza Besigye from where he is being held immediately,” said his wife Winnie Byanyima.

It was not immediately possible to get in touch with a Ugandan military spokesperson for comment.

“As police we don’t have him, so we can’t make any comment,” Ugandan police spokesman Kituuma Rusoke told Reuters.
A spokesperson for Kenya’s national police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Besigye’s Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party, one of Uganda’s major opposition parties, had 36 members arrested by Kenyan police in July. They were then deported to Uganda and accused of terrorism-related charges.

On the social networking site X, Byanyima stated that Besigye, who served as Museveni’s doctor during the guerrilla war but later turned into a vocal opponent, was abducted on Saturday as senior Kenyan opposition leader Martha Karua was launching a book.

“I am now reliably informed that he is in a military jail in Kampala,” said Byanyima, who is the executive director of UNAIDS, the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. “We his family and his lawyers demand to see him. He is not a soldier. Why is he being held in a military jail?”

Museveni’s administration has been charged with repeatedly violating the human rights of opposition leaders and followers, including extrajudicial executions, torture, and unlawful detentions.

Politics

Sudan army chief Burhan meets US envoy

Published

1 day ago

November 20, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

The United States special envoy to Sudan has made his first trip to the African nation, hoping to bring an end to a horrific war and boost relief to millions of people in need.

After being appointed Washington’s ambassador to Sudan in February, Tom Perriello visited Port Sudan, the army-led government’s de facto capital on the Red Sea coast.

For the first time since the evacuation of the U.S. embassy in April 2023 due to the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a top U.S. official visited the nation.

“We feel an enormous amount of urgency to end this crisis and to ensure that we can … help to get food and medicine and life-saving support to the 20 million people plus that are in need,” a State Department official said before the trip.

Over 25 million people, or half of Sudan’s population, require help, according to the U.N., as hunger has spread to one area and over 11 million people have abandoned their homes.

Sudan’s sovereign council stated in a statement that Perriello spoke with tribal, government, and humanitarian figures in addition to Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s army head.

During what the council described as a “lengthy, comprehensive, and frank” discussion, the two men talked about how to provide humanitarian help and how to end the war through a political process.

“The U.S. envoy presented several suggestions which the head of the sovereign council agreed to,” the statement said.

Although the army declined to join U.S.-mediated peace negotiations in Geneva earlier this year, the meetings did obtain commitments from the warring parties to increase access to aid.

A power battle between the army and the RSF preceded a planned shift to civilian government, which is why the conflict broke out more than a year ago.

Perriello discussed “the need to cease fighting, enable unhindered humanitarian access, including through localized pauses in the fighting to allow for the delivery of emergency relief supplies, and commit to a civilian government,” a State Department statement said.

“Right now, I think there’s a key opportunity to build on the expansion of humanitarian aid,” the State Department official stated, emphasising the need for relief corridors to the most battle-ravaged areas, such as al-Fashir, Sennar, and parts of the capital Khartoum, even though the U.S. would continue to pursue a more comprehensive ceasefire and negotiations.

Last Monday, Sudan’s sovereign council announced that it would prolong the temporary opening of the Adre border crossing with Chad. According to relief organisations, this crossing is essential for delivering food and other supplies to famine-prone portions of the Darfur and Kordofan regions.

An RSF official stated at a press conference in Nairobi that while they were still amenable to peace, they had doubts about the army’s readiness.

“They do not listen to any language but that of the rifle, and so we will continue to talk to them in the language they understand,” said Brigadier General Omar Hamdan.