South Sudanese President Says His Rallies Have Been Blocked In Areas Under Armed Opposition

July 9 (EUROPA PRESS) –

South Sudan’s ruling party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), said on Friday that its election campaign rallies had been blocked in some areas controlled by the opposition, the former rebel group the People’s Liberation Movement. of Sudan in Opposition (SPLM-IO).

“With the exception of some counties where the SPLM-IO commanders are not informed that we are at peace in Juba, they denied the SPLM organizing [mítines] in those areas,” said the interim secretary general of the SPLM, Peter Lam Both, according to the newspaper ‘Sudans Post’.

The ruling party, SPLM, led by Salva Kiir, hopes to face the opposition group, SPLM-IO, led by First Vice President Riek Machar in the 2023 elections.

Machar’s group would have threatened to boycott the elections if the transitional measures provided for in the 2018 peace agreement are not fully implemented.

SPLM-IO deputy chairman and first deputy chairman of the transitional national legislative assembly, Oyet Nathaniel Pierino, had said his group is not afraid of elections but wants the peace deal to be fully implemented.

Similarly, the South Sudanese NGO Community Empowerment Organization for Progress (CEPO) has expressed fear over the commitment of the two main signatories of the revitalized peace agreement, and has urged them to avoid engaging in rhetoric that could create political tensions, pointed out by the aforementioned medium.

Earlier, at the end of June, the Government of South Sudan had presented a national plan aimed at strengthening institutions and promoting transparent and inclusive governance in the post-election period.

South Sudan has a unity government that was launched after the 2018 peace agreement materialized. The South Sudanese Presidency announced in January 2020 that the parties to the peace agreement had agreed to once again extend the transition period, this time until 2023, to give room for the application of the clauses of the pact, in the midst of international requests to speed up the process.

Despite the decrease in violence due to the political conflict, the country has registered an increase in inter-community clashes, mainly motivated by cattle theft and disputes between herders and farmers in the most fertile areas of the country, especially due to the increase in desertification and population displacement.