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| Salva Kiir, President of the Republic of South Sudan |
The South Sudanese leader, Salva Kiir has unconditionally revoked an executive order, which earlier dismissed senior members of the country’s ruling party (SPLM).
In February last year, the president issued an administrative order, removing Riek Machar from his position as first deputy chairman of the SPLM party.
The president, in the order announced on SSTV, also dismissed the former Unity state governor, Taban Deng as well as former environment minister, Alfred Lado Gore.
The dismissed officials were accused of orchestrating the December 2013 outbreak of violence, which saw thousands killed and millions displaced.
However, Akol Paul Kordit, a member of the SPLM political bureau, said the South Sudanese leader, in his capacity as the ruling party chairman, revoked that dismissal of the senior officials.
The move, he said, was part of the implementation of the resolutions of the meeting held with an advance team of the former political detainees on Tuesday. Cyril Ramaphosa, the deputy chairman of South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) attended the meeting held in the capital, Juba.
"All the previous decisions dismissing some members of the SPLM have been revoked in accordance with the Arusha reunification union. All the bank accounts of the former detainees have been unfrozen,” Kordit told reporters in Juba on Wednesday.
“They [former detainees] are free to leave and return to the country as ordinary citizens anytime they want. We have agreed to work together as one family,” he added.
Kordit said the ruling party’s political bureau also resolved that the armed opposition leader be re-instated back to his position as first deputy chairperson of the SPLM.
“We have agreed to recommit ourselves to reunifying the party so that we all take the party and the country forward and embark on reconciliation and healing process", he said.
Meanwhile, the South Sudanese armed opposition faction of the ruling (SPLM) party has welcomed the decision to revoke the “unconstitutional” dismissal of their leader, Riek Machar, and his colleagues from the ruling party, saying the move was an “overdue” good gesture.
“Well, we welcome the good gesture. It does not come out of the blue. Actually it is overdue because it is a provision in the roadmap agreement on SPLM reunification process signed in Arusha several months ago,” Machar’s spokesman, James Gatdet Dak, told Sudan Tribune on Wednesday evening when contacted for comment.
Source: John Ashwort, Juba South Sudan and AMECEA Online News Staff