By Yiep Joseph
Civil society activist has called on the government and peace monitors to form an election safety and protection team on time in order to gain public trust in the 2026 election.
According to the statement extended to the media, Edmund Yaknai, the Executive Director for Community Empowerment for Progress Organization (CEPO), requested the setting of election safety and protection in order to gain public trust.
He claimed that till now some of the citizens continue to double the reliability of the 2026 election due to the reluctance of parties on the implementation of pending tasks in the peace agreement.
Yakani added that for the government to gain public trust regarding the election, there is a need to encourage partners to help in forming an election safety and protection team.
“UN, AU, and IGAD should be encouraged to form election safety, protection, and support teams for gaining public trust in the reliability of the election,” Yakani said.
He called on the presidency to officially invite the partners to help in the process in order to speed up the process.
“CEPO is urging the presidency to officially invite the UN, AU, and IGAD to help in the constitution election support and protection team that will work jointly with our National Elections Commission for administration and management of credible and peaceful elections,” he said.
Activist Yakani added that the success of the elections to be held in December 2026 required at least by October 2025 that all required conditions or tasks for creating a good enough environment for holding the elections are delivered.
He added that among the key conditions or tasks required are operationalization of judicial reforms, unification of forces, constitution-making, and decision on delinking elections from the population census.
He called on political leaders to double their efforts in early 2025 to create a conducive environment for conducting elections.
“Elections are now the available option for a peaceful political transitional process in South Sudan,” he said.
He called on the leaders to adopt good politics in order to avoid the past cases where leaders failed to implement the peace agreement.
“The evidence is clearly demonstrated by the implementation of the R-ARCSS for five years, with less than 20% of the tasks delivered, over 35% in progress, and about 50% still standing,” he said.
“This proof is that the genuine political transitional act will be holding elections without any excuse in December 2026,” he added.
He urged the presidency to always focus on renewing their political pledge for a successful political transitional process, which leads to the creation of good enough conditions for holding credible and peaceful elections in December 2026.
Recently, the National Elections Commission (NEC) took a significant step towards electoral preparations by adopting three (3) electoral regulations on code of conduct, media, agents, and special guest representation and regulation of election campaigns.
This took place during the NEC Operational Planning retreat in Entebbe held between the 3rd and 5th of December 2024, marking a crucial step towards conducting democratic, inclusive, transparent, peaceful, and credible elections in the country.