A disagreement over which party should nominate a candidate for the governorship of Jonglei state has emerged within the Opposition Alliance.
This comes after the South Sudan Opposition Alliance initially rejected the Jonglei offer, saying it was not its preferred state.
This week, the Alliance’s chairperson and the Secretary-General both issued conflicting statements regarding the new deal on the allocation of states.
The spokesperson of the Federal Democratic-led by Gabriel Changson Chang told Eye Radio that they have nominated the minister of higher education to take up the position of governorship.
“If Jonglei state becomes share of SSOA, the second hypothesis is for us to see who is the son of that state, and here the name of the minister of high education Denay Chagor emerged as the son of Jonglei state for the position of the governor and someone from the other parties who don’t get the chance have to fill the position of the minister of high education and this the hypothesis,” Wazir Michael explained on Friday.
But the spokesperson of the National Democratic Movement (NDM), led by Lam Akol, says it is its turn to nominate a candidate.
“The accusation that NDF has violated the charter is not true, we are actually following the charter and that is why in our position we said that we are pursuant to the agreement and it’s also pursuant to the power-sharing charter,” David Lawrence said.
“So when we nominated Majok Diel for the position of the governorship of Jongolei state, it was seconded by SLSM which is one of the parties that was left out. The tension is very clear from the other groups, they wanted to exchange the current minister of higher education who is Denay Chagor in favor of uncle Changson to be the Minister of Higher Education.”
The leaders of the opposition alliance have always had difficulty choosing their representative as a political bloc.
After they failed to nominate their representative to the peace presidency in February, President Salva Kiir had to choose for them.