April 18th 2018 (Nyamilepedia) – South Sudan government on Tuesday vowed to oppose any proposal at the peace talks seeking to change the current system of the county’s security sector specially the army and police.
Speaking to the press in the nation’s capital Juba, the country’s vice president James Wani Igga said the demand by the opposition to dissolve the army and police will likely fuel the instability in the country and further destabilize the country.
“They want, as soon as they have signed the agreement, institutions like the army to be dissolved. But if we dissolve the army right from that day, then wolf from any part of the world will just enter South Sudan to create anarchy,” vice president Igga said.
He said that the agreement was meant to carry out institutional reforms by integrating the opposition forces to the system already in practice but on the basis of regional balancing.
“Our intention as in the former agreement is to carry out institutional reforms where we will have the rebel army integrated into the system on the basis of regional exclusivity and balancing” Igga said.
Government opposes return to 10 states system
South Sudan’s vice president also said the government is opposed to the return to the 10 states system saying this will breed public discontent and force people he did not named to rebel against the government and further jeopardize peace in the country.
The Opposition Alliance which includes 10 opposition groups informed the IGAD last week that they are for the return of the country to the defunct 10-states system beside the Pibor and Abyei special administrative areas which was altered by president Salva Kiir in October 2015. The group said they instead want the Federal system of governance in the country rather than the current centralized system which they said confined all powers and resources to the ruling “elites” in the nation’s capital Juba.
The Alliance also proposed that the Army should be dissolved and reconstituted while calling for the exclusion of President Salva Kiir and former First Vice President Riek Machar from the next transitional government arguing that the two had failed during previous transitions.
Vice president Igga also said his government opposes calls for president Salva Kiir to step down saying the later was elected by the South Sudanese people in the April 2010 elections.
South Sudan’s president Salva Kiir Mayardiit was elected in 2010 as President of the then Government of Southern Sudan (GOSS). His term expires in 2015 but a civil war erupted in the country in December 2013 after government militias under the command of the president targeted and massacred thousands of civilians from ethnic Nuer community who sound to the government as the same as Machar.
Thousand of people have been killed and almost half of South Sudan’s 12 million population has been displaced both internally and to neighboring countries. Efforts by the regional and the international community to try to bring peace to the young African nation were paralyzed after a 2015 peace deal collapsed in July 2016 following the return home of rebel leader Riek Machar after two years in the bush.
