South Sudan postpones its first presidential elections to 2026
South Sudanese are still unable to elect their president. Since they achieved independence in 2011, civil war and political instability have made elections impossible. The next opportunity will be in two years.
One of the many moments that the Paris 2024 Olympic Games left to remember was the debut of the South Sudan basketball team. The team, which played its first professional game in 2017, debuted with a victory against Puerto Rico. Behind this success is the friendship that unites the coach, Royal Ivey, with the president of the South Sudan Basketball Federation, Luol Deng, to which is added the commitment of a group of players who have made what, Until very recently, it seemed like a utopia due to the lack of conditions in a country that is among the most impoverished in the world.
The holding of the first democratic elections in the short history of the African country also seems a utopia today. In January 2005, in Kenya, the peace agreement between Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army was signed. This signing put an end to decades of civil war and opened the doors to an independence referendum. In said plebiscite, which was held six years later, in January 2011, more than 98% of the population called to the polls voted for independence, which became a reality on July 9 of that same year. 13 years later, the holding of presidential elections has been postponed for the third time. If one of the secrets of the basketball team’s success is the friendship between Ivey and Deng, one of the keys to unblocking the situation in South Sudan is the relationship between the president, Salva Kiir, and the vice president, Riek Machar. In an article for The Conversation, Professor Abigail Kabandula, director of the Africa Center at the University of Denver (USA), points out that the two leaders “share a complicated history and a deep-seated mutual distrust that threatens the integrity of the entire electoral process.”
From one postponement to another
The two politicians held their positions after the country’s independence. However, just two years later, tensions between the two led to a first civil war that ended with the signing in 2015 of the Agreement on the Resolution of Conflicts in South Sudan (ARCSS). But the resurgence of the conflict in 2016 forced the search for a new compromise, the Revitalized Agreement for the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS), which was signed in 2018. Two years later, Kiir and Machar resolved to form a Government of national unity. The first elections were planned for December 2022, but in August of that same year they decided to postpone them until December 2024. Last September, they decided to delay them for another 24 months, until December 2026, due to lack of preparation, according to government sources. This decision, expected by both South Sudanese analysts and international institutions and foreign governments, was a hard blow to the aspirations of a people who overwhelmingly support holding the elections.
Waar Machour, director of the first independent South Sudanese radio station, Radio Tamazuj, was one of those who announced, in an interview with Nigrizia last September, that the December votes were not going to take place, but that South Sudanese citizens should not stop preparing for the country to continue maturing. A few days after the postponement became official, eight diplomatic delegations in South Sudan (Germany, Canada, USA, France, Norway, Netherlands, United Kingdom and the EU) issued a joint statement to express their disappointment at this new extension. Two more years that, for the South Sudanese journalist Koka Lo’Lado, will mean the lack of representation and opinion of the people, the proliferation of armed violence or the absence of the rule of law. In an opinion article published on the Radio Tamazuj portal, Lo’Lado also points out the difficulties that will be experienced in paying the salaries of civil servants.
Among the arguments put forward by the president for the new postponement, the economic issue stands out. The week after it was announced that the elections would be postponed until December 2026, the Minister of Cabinet Affairs, Martin Elia Lomuro, revealed that the country needs 433 million dollars to be able to hold the votes. With an economy burdened by successive decades of war, the national budget depends almost entirely on oil revenues. Professor Kabandula raises the percentage of funds from the exploitation of black gold to 98% and recognizes the current difficulties in financing electoral processes “mainly due to a sharp reduction in oil revenues, aggravated by economic difficulties and the diversion of resources by the ruling elite.
The war that has been waged since April 2023 in Sudan, the country through which South Sudanese crude oil leaves, has caused a significant decrease in State income, which has further aggravated the situation. Added to this is the arrival of refugees fleeing the conflict in the neighboring country, as well as the return of many South Sudanese who had fled to the north due to clashes between Kiir and Machar’s troops during the last decade, which has further tense the economic and social situation of the country.
But the electoral postponement is not only due to a strictly monetary issue, since the legal and political challenges are even deeper. Of all of them, two should be highlighted. Firstly, the lack of an updated registry, which prevents the preparation of a voter census. Population changes, due to being a fundamentally young society, as well as the return of many South Sudanese refugees, represent an important challenge to take into account when preparing for general elections. Secondly, South Sudan does not yet have a final constitution. The current Magna Carta is nothing more than a transitional document approved after independence.
Will it be in 2026?
The question that arises is therefore whether in just two years, in December 2026, South Sudan will be prepared for its first elections. Luka Biong Deng, an economist and professor at the universities of Juba (South Sudan) and National Defense University in Washington (USA), wonders what can be done to avoid a new postponement. The South Sudanese researcher advocates the creation of a new political infrastructure in which the Reconstituted Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (RJMEC), the body responsible for monitoring the 2018 peace agreements, begins an election campaign in order to “promote a national agenda to end this cycle of postponements” as well as “prepare and support the adoption of legislation to prevent the postponement of the elections by the Transitional Government of National Unity in 2026». Another solution proposed by Biong Deng is to resort to the 2012 Electoral Law, according to which, if the elections do not take place on that date, the president can dissolve the entire government and replace it with a technocratic provisional government whose main mission is the to “guarantee the implementation of the 2018 peace agreements and the holding of elections.” These are, without a doubt, two of the possible solutions to avoid a new postponement. But the support of the international community will be necessary through the United Nations agencies and its mission in the country (UNMISS), “to the institutions related to the elections, such as the National Electoral Commission, the National Constitution Review Commission , the National Statistics Office and the Council of Political Parties,” according to Biong Deng.
South Sudan is a country that faces deep and serious problems. According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), almost half of the country’s population faces high levels of hunger. Last October, an article by Florence Miettaux in Le Monde warned of how the health sector was on the brink of collapse. Holding elections in South Sudan will in no way be the solution to these and other problems in the country. But guaranteeing the conditions that allow its celebration can be a step forward for this African nation to equip itself with mechanisms that allow it to face its own challenges.
