Gov’t should look forward to redemption within the extended transitional period
Vice President Dr. Riek Machar amplified the very limited time left available for the government to implement the remaining yet critical parts of this transitional period. In his statement, he stated, “we are all cognizant that in the next four months, you cannot implement what is in this agreement. You have 72.7 percent of the agreement unimplemented. You have no choice.” The people hope that all the pending will be completed within this extension.
With grave responsibilities including the unification of forces and their deployment still left incomplete yet, the people are only left to believe in what the government declared on Tuesday about graduation of the forces soon. Another serious task left includes reconstitution of the electoral commission to ensure that the country shall have free and fair elections at the end of the extended transitional period.
On Tuesday, Tut Gatluak revealed to the public how the first batch of the unified forces will be graduated two weeks from now, a decision which came after a meeting between the heads of security mechanisms and the National Transitional Committee to do away with the “nagging issue of graduation of the united forces”. This promise came at the cost of the country becoming democratic next year given the extension of the transitional period.
As indicated in the Roadmap for a peaceful and democratic end of the transitional period for the country; “Phase-1 is the graduation and deployment process of the forces, to commence in August, 2022”. This is only phase 1 of chapter 2 of the 6 chapters of the Roadmap whose vision is to have a democratic state of South Sudan after the extended transitional period to 2024 has ended.