NAIROBI (Reuters) – A group of South Sudanese lawyers filed a case to the country’s top court on Monday challenging the president’s postponement of elections and extension of the transitional government’s term for two years.
Ten days ago, President Salva Kiir’s office announced an extension of the transitional period by two years and postponed elections for a second time following a delay in 2022.
Late last week, parliament ratified the decision without changes after the cabinet endorsed it. Elections were due to be held in December.
On Monday, the lawyers challenging the action went to the Supreme Court, asking it to declare it “null and void.”
“As lawyers, we think that this extension is unconstitutional, is illegal and we (are) demanding our government to conduct elections within the time-frame,” Deng John Deng, speaking on behalf of his colleagues, told reporters shortly after filing the case.
Michael Makuei, the information minister and government spokesperson, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The postponement prompted international guarantors of South Sudan’s peace process to express their disappointment, saying it showed the government’s failure to implement a 2018 peace plan.
South Sudan has formally been at peace since the 2018 agreement ended a five-year conflict responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, but violence between rival communities breaks out frequently.
(Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)
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