The SPLM/A-IO is dismayed by the proposal of the South African Special Envoy to South Sudan of deciding on a number of states and their boundaries 90 days after formation of the transitional government, Angelina Juany Teny, head Security Defence.
She told journalists on Friday that they agreed to form the transitional government of national unity on time, despite the issue of number of states.
“We were shocked and surprised that the Special Envoy David Mabuza went and came with a proposal that this committee they have amended our proposal by adding him to be part of this committee, they have not amended the timeline and they have given it 90 days”, says Juany.
The 90 days was a shock to the SPLM in-opposition party because it is considered another proposal of an extension by the envoy, she notes.
Juany stresses that “three months for this committee to complete its work, to us is automatically they’re proposing an extension of the pre-transitional period. We felt that we need to make this clear, so that we are not misunderstood”.
The Security Defence head questions why some government forces are not turning up for training and unification, yet it is an issue of concern.
“It is obvious that comes the 22nd of February you will not have unified organized forces deployed, which was the other critical issues for the formation of the government, so we came up with ideas”, Juany says.
There was a compromise on deployment of forces to be looked again at and third party force of UNMISS to be deployed in identified areas such as Juba, Yei, Angelina clarified.
We are asking for declaration of position of forces current deployment to identify the areas that need third party to avoid the repeat of the incident of 2016, says Angelina.
The Opposition Security Defence head discloses that they gave the mechanism two weeks and Troika should be part of the consultation with African Union High Level Ad Hoc committee in South Sudan to resolve the number of states and boundaries.