NAIROBI, Sept 16 (Reuters) – South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir has replaced the head of the election commission, only about three months before the first national election since independence in 2011.
• The president, in an announcement read out by the state-owned broadcaster on Tuesday, said commission Secretary General Gabriel Bol Deng will replace Abednego Akok Kacuol. He gave no reason for the change.
• South Sudan has been at peace since a 2018 agreement ended a five-year conflict during which thousands of people were killed. Still, inter-communal violence is frequent.
• Presidential and parliamentary elections are scheduled for December 22.
• Edmond Yakani, executive director of Community Empowerment for Progress Organisation, a South Sudan activist group, said the replacement this close to the election risks eroding voter confidence.
• “Firing a chairperson of an electoral commission three months before the election is a disaster, but this goes together with what is the political leadership thinking about the elections,” he told Reuters.
• Last week, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan said the country lacked safeguards and conditions for peaceful and credible elections.
(Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Christopher Cushing)
