South Sudan president reappoints ex-rebel leader as VP

by Parach Mach

JUBA, South Sudan

South Sudan President Salva Kiir re-appointed former rebel leader Riek Machar as first vice president Thursday, a move anticipated by the peace agreement signed last August but long delayed.

The incumbent vice president, James Wani Igga, will take the post of second vice president.

Kiir's decree restored Machar to a position he had held from 2005 until mid-2013, when he was removed shortly before the outbreak of civil war. In 2014, he formed the rebel group SPLM-IO (Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition) and declared he would overthrow the government. He signed a peace deal with the government in August 2015.

According to the peace deal, the new first vice president will have authority in several areas, including oversight of implementation of legislation passed by parliament, chairing sub-committees of the cabinet, and following up cabinet decisions.

Machar’s spokesman James Gatdet Dak said the appointment of his boss was a step forward in the implementation of the peace agreement.

But Dak added the appointment came as a surprise.

"The rushed appointment comes as a surprise. We thought my Chairman, Comrade Dr. Riek Machar, should have arrived in Juba first before the appointment is issued," Dak said as quoted by the Sudan Tribune. "We hope President Kiir will not come up with another rushed surprise by forming a national unity government without my Chairman in Juba."

Machar has not yet returned to Juba and remains in exile. An SPLM-IO former chief negotiator Taban Deng Gai said this week that he would not return to Juba before his bodyguards arrived ahead of him.

The factions last August divvied up the ministries, leaving the defense, justice, information and national security ministries in the hands of the ruling party, among others, while several key ministries were handed over to the opposition, including petroleum and foreign affairs.

South Sudan descended into civil war in December 2013.