President Kiir and his deputies after the swearing in ceremony at the State House on 22 February 20202 | Credit | Ministry ICT & Postal Services

Disagreements between peace parties over how many states each party take is delaying the appointment of governors, the presidential press secretary has said. 

The peace parties in late February started the process of forming a coalition government, in line with the September 2018 peace deal.

The transitional unity government is not yet finalized as state governors are still to be appointed.

The revitalized peace agreement stated that 55 % of the state’s governors will be for the government and 27% for IO, OPP with 8% and the remaining 10 % for SSOA.

However, meetings in Juba between SPLM/A-IO, ITGoNU, SSOA, OPP could not reach a compromise.

The government has been insisting to take 6 states while offering 2 states to Dr. Machar’s SPLM-IO, and 1 state to SSOA, and another 1 to OPP.

Ateny Wek Ateny told Eye Radio on Monday that the parties have not yet agreed on how many governors should each party have.

“The parties have not yet agreed on how many governors should be allocated to each party because of the percentage – 45% against 65%, 45 is all the opposition including the IO, SSOA, and OPP,” he said.

“When you look at those percentages the IO has 27 percent of the 45 and the OPP has 8 which makes it 35 and the SSOA has 10% dividing them mathematically or arithmetically will give IO at 2 because 7 is lesser than 8 percent of the OPP.

“The OPP argument is that they must have because 8 is bigger than 7 and the IO they have 2, and SSOA with 10% will have 1 state and the government with 54 percent should have 6.

“These are the percentages that have not been agreed upon so we don’t know which governor to appoint and which governor to leave because it will feel like a violation of the agreement unless people agree on those percentages where they represent consensually.”

Early this month, the head of UNMISS expressed concern over the political vacuum with no state governors more than two weeks after the formation of a unity government.

According to David Shearer, the absence of political leadership, especially in Jonglei State has contributed to the outbreak of intercommonal violence.