South Sudan President Salva Kiir dissolved the country’s transitional government on Monday, three months before what would be the nation’s first election since independence in 2011 — removing all five vice-presidents, parliament, and every national and state government in one sweep.
The move formalises what Kiir himself had signalled two months earlier. In a July interview, he questioned the point of the bloated power-sharing structure created to hold the 2018 peace deal together: “Now you can see the five vice presidents, what will they do? In Parliament, we have 650 members, what will they do? This huge government prevented development.” He described the arrangement as a necessary compromise to preserve peace after years of conflict, but one the country could no longer afford to keep funding indefinitely.
Kiir remains in office with full constitutional powers as a caretaker until an elected president is sworn in, and he has reappointed some ministers and governors to caretaker roles ahead of the 22 December vote — the first time South Sudanese will elect a national leader by ballot since independence 15 years ago. He is running on the SPLM ticket with no serious declared challenger, in part because the man who would have contested him isn’t free to run.
Riek Machar, Kiir’s rival since a 2013 political split plunged the country into a civil war that killed more than 400,000 people, was removed as vice-president last year and is now on trial for treason, murder and terrorism-related charges in Juba, alongside several of his SPLM-IO allies. He has been under house arrest since March, when a militia clash tied to his party killed a senior general, a UN helicopter pilot and more than 250 soldiers.
A UN panel of experts warned this month that the treason trial is actively eroding what remains of the 2018 peace agreement, and that the security landscape now looks meaningfully different — and more fragmented — than it did when that agreement was signed. UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix told the Security Council last month that the country had reached “a breaking point.”
The numbers behind that warning are stark: an estimated 7.7 million people — 57% of South Sudan’s population — are currently facing crisis levels of food insecurity, with pockets of famine already present in communities hit hardest by the renewed fighting.
Machar’s SPLM-IO has said it will boycott the December vote entirely, telling the BBC that large parts of the country remain outside government control and questioning how residents there would even cast a ballot. The party has written to the African Union warning that South Sudan has entered a “constitutional and legitimacy crisis.” The election commission, for its part, said in August it needs $250m to run the vote but has received just $21m — and its chairman was dismissed without explanation last week, days before Monday’s dissolution.
The Reconstituted Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission, which oversees the 2018 agreement’s implementation, has described the country as entering a “critical phase” and is pushing both sides toward a credible path to the vote and regional stability. Whether that’s still possible with the main opposition sitting out and its leader on trial for his life is now the question hanging over South Sudan’s first attempt at choosing a government the way most countries do — at the ballot box, rather than around a negotiating table. His own recent presidential order on confirming his candidacy leaves little doubt about which side of that choice he’s betting on.
