A report says South Sudan has appointed a man who died fives ago to an Election Panel recently.
It was shocking when Steward Sorobo Budia, a late opposition politician, was named amongst the 70 people appointed to a Panel to prepare for a long-delayed elections in the country.
According to The New York Times, Mr. Budia had died five years earlier.
Observers believe that the mix-up wasn’t just a sign of deep political crisis but that of gross incompetence by the government of President Salva Kiir, who is under pressure as fighting between rebels and security forces pushes toward the capital.
The striking mistake, was later corrected by embarrassed government officials, as President Kiir tries to bolster his beleaguered government while the country slides towards a new civil war.
Mr. Kiir has fired or rotated numerous senior government officials over the past 18 months, some within days of their appointment.
He has arrested and put on trial the country’s vice president, Riek Machar, endangering a 2018 peace deal between the two men that underpins South Sudan’s political stability.
Kiir has also openly clashed with the United States, which accuses his government of undermining peace efforts and sabotaging humanitarian aid.
South Sudan initially tried to placate President Trump, becoming the first country in Mr. Trump’s second term to accept third-country deportees from the United States last summer. Despite that, relations with Washington have deteriorated.
The political crisis in the capital, Juba, has stoked fighting between government forces and Mr. Machar’s supporters in the northeast of the country, particularly in the states of Jonglei and Upper Nile.
As fighting pushed toward Juba in recent months, the military responded with brutal tactics, including an airstrike on a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders on Feb. 3, the aid group said in a statement.
