South Sudan Delays Anticipated Elections by Two Years

The long-delayed presidential elections for South Sudan were officially postponed on September 13, 2024, as a result of state-wide instability. While the government initially scheduled the transition period of South Sudanese politics to conclude in December 2024 with the country’s first democratic election, the current president, Salva Kiir Mayart, announced in a Facebook post that the election would instead occur in December 2026.

South Sudan became an independent state in 2011 following a referendum that yielded 98.8 percent support from the South Sudanese people. Following the South Sudanese Civil War (2013-2020), a coalition formed by the two leaders of the former parties, Mayart and Rick Machar, has primarily governed South Sudan. The government formed the transitional constitution with intentions to eventually create a democratic presidential republic.

The government amended the transitional constitution to delay the transition due to economic instability within the electoral process. Foremost, the elections lacked necessary funding to ensure fairness. The South Sudanese government established two primary electoral bodies, the National Constitution Review Commission and the National Electoral Commission to monitor the vote; however, neither institution received any federal funding. This is partially due to the economic hardships faced by South Sudan in recent times; oil production has halved in the past ten years, resulting in an economic spiral and a lack of appropriate resources.

Political instability has also contributed to faulty election preparations. Prior to the signing of the peace agreement in 2018 that ended the South Sudanese Civil War, many fled the region to neighboring countries. However, once the agreement prevailed, one million of these refugees returned. South Sudan, in a time of economic uncertainty, was unable to accommodate the returnees, creating a humanitarian crisis of unemployment, starvation, and poverty. The two leaders, Machar and Mayart, clash in methodology on how to alleviate these humanitarian issues, thus risking national security. Important tasks, such as training 33,000 security personnel for the election, have thus gone ignored.

Though the delay of elections is a step backwards in progress for phasing out the transitional government, it lessens the risk of a corrupt election lacking proper resources. Andrea Mach Mabior, a political analyst, examined the potential political risk in allowing for the election to take place despite the instability. “Going for elections that do not meet international standards will be a waste of money,” she concluded. Indeed, an election that is not free and fair does not contribute to the advancement of democracy, but rather hinders it.