South Sudan rebels say president Kiir a challenge to the world

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July 9, 2015 (ADDIS ABABA) – South Sudanese rebels said the world should
not allow president Salva Kiir to impose himself and continue as president
by “usurping” powers of the people, adding the act of self-extension of
tenure by three years was a challenge to the democratic nations across the
globe.
[image: JPEG - 20.3 kb]*South Sudan rebel leader Riek Machar addresses
journalists during a news conference in Nairobi, Kenya (Photo AP)*

President Kiir on Wednesday began his renewed three years term of office
per extension by the national legislature in the country. This, the
parliament said, was in the absence of elections this year due to the
ongoing civil war in the country.

But the armed opposition faction of the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement
(SPLM-IO), led by his former deputy, Riek Machar, said the action was
unconstitutional and that president Kiir, governors and national and state
legislatures were therefore illegitimate, plunging the country into
constitutional crisis.

“This could only be seen in desperate, vision-lacking dictatorships like
the regime of Salva Kiir where elected members of parliament refused to
give power back to the people. The MPs decided to self-renew their
electable memberships and that of the president just with the stroke of a
pen despite expiry of their tenures,” said James Gatdet Dak, press
secretary for the opposition leader, Riek Machar.

“Salva Kiir is usurping the power of the people in total disregard for
democratic principles and practices. It is a coup against the people,” Dak
told *Sudan Tribune* when contacted on Thursday.

The rebel leader’s spokesman challenged the international community,
particularly democratic nations in the region and around the world, to not
let Kiir get away with “this bad precedence” in the country and should
therefore be isolated and declared illegitimate.

President Kiir’s elected five-year term of office expired two months ago on
21 May. Tenure for the elected national legislature expired on 8 March. A
four-year constitutional mandate after independence for both executive and
legislative leaderships and memberships which started on 9 July 2011 also
expired on Wednesday 8 July 2015.

On Wednesday the rebel leader Machar called for a press conference in the
Kenyan capital, Nairobi, in which he released a statement declaring
president Kiir unconstitutional and illegitimate by 8 July midnight when
his four-year term in office provided by the transitional constitution,
2011, expired.

However, when inquired whether this declaration meant the rebels were
withdrawing from negotiations with president Kiir, Dak explained that the
statement was not a withdrawal from the IGAD-led peace process, saying they
wanted the world to understand that they would be dealing with an
illegitimate peace partner.

“Our leadership will be propagating to the world to seriously take up the
challenge by not leaving Salva Kiir’s despotic, illegitimate regime
unchecked,” he said.

He said the international community should not this time repeat the
“weakness of inaction”, pointing out that president Kiir’s forces carried
out massacres of thousands of civilians targeting an ethnic group in Juba
in the presence of embassies or foreign missions and no action was taken by
those nations against him.

An alternative for a new political dispensation in the absence of
elections, he said, was to reach a peace agreement and form a transitional
government of national unity which shall implement the would-be peace
agreement and prepare for the next elections.

He lamented it was unfortunate that the current ruling party and former
guerilla movement (SPLM) was being led by dictators from its inception in
1983 whom he said had to violently resist positive changes and ideas and
only to accept such changes after blood-letting. He cited the quest for
self-determination and now democracy as examples.

He concluded by pointing out that from 9 July president Kiir was imposing
himself on the people of South Sudan by usurping their power
unconstitutionally, saying the citizens now had the right to overthrow him.

Fighting erupted on 15 December 2013 when internal debate over democratic
political transformation and reforms within the leadership of the ruling
party turned violent, plunging the country into national crisis and civil
war.

Peace talks between the warring parties to try to end the 19-month long war
are expected to resume this mid-July in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa,
mediated by the East African regional bloc, the Intergovernmental Authority
on Development (IGAD).

(ST)
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Kind regards,

The Sudan Tribune editorial team.
 <http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article55645#forum>
10 July 05:22, by Kenyang

Impatient animals in less then 2 yrs are unable to finish what they
started. They are already calling someone else to remove Kiir. What they
don’t know, the world know them well. Who would they rule in South Sudan?

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