South Sudan President Has Called for the Dissolution of Parliament.

President Salva Kiir of South Sudan has dissolved parliament, allowing representatives from opposite sides of the country’s civil war to be named under a 2018 peace agreement.

Kiir’s decision was announced on public television on Saturday evening, but no timetable for the new parliament’s start was issued.

The creation of a new legislative body was part of a September 2018
agreement between Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar, who had been on
opposing sides for years during the five-year civil war that killed
380,000 people and displaced four million.

Activists and civil society organizations applauded the dissolution of parliament, claiming it had been long overdue, but expressed reservations.

According to the 2018 agreement, the new assembly would have 550 members, with 332 of them from Kiir’s ruling SPLM party. Parliamentarians would not be elected, but rather nominated by various political parties.

The dissolution of parliament occurred on the eve of US special envoy to South Sudan Donald Booth’s visit to the capital, Juba.

“Of particular concern to the United States is the slow implementation
of the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the
Republic of South Sudan, ongoing violence, and deteriorating economic
and humanitarian conditions,” the US State Department said in a
statement.

After nearly a year of delays, Kiir and Machar formed a coalition government on February 22, 2020.

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However, only a few terms of the cease-fire have been observed, prompting observers to predict a return to war.

The oil-rich country is still badly underdeveloped and controlled.

Despite
the peace agreement, violent communal disputes — mostly over livestock
raiding — persist, with over 1,000 people killed in fighting between
rival groups in the first half of 2020.