One of the challenges for this long-standing activist of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) will be to consolidate peace and unity within a newly “restored” assembly.
The announcement was made by President Salva Kiir personally on Friday, July 23: Jemma Nunu Kumba will be the first woman to chair the South Sudanese parliament.
For 55 years, the current secretary of the liberation movement of the Sudanese people has a long activist career behind him. In the 1990s, she joined the uprising and joined the SPLM in the war between them in Khartoum for South Sudan’s independence.
She then took part in peace talks between the SPLM and the Sudanese government. Since independence in 2011, she has been elected governor of the state of Western Equatoria in the southwest and has held several ministerial positions, including Water. Within Salva Kiir’s party, she also stepped through the ranks.
Last May, The Riksdag was dissolved, then reconstituted, from 400 to 550 deputies, a quarter of whom were appointed by Riek Machar, the former enemy of Salva Kiir, with whom he shares power in a government with national unity.
Salva Kiir therefore calls on the President of the new Parliament to focus on the implementation of the 2018 peace agreement. Ends with Riek Machar and other parties after a civil war that has left more than 380,000 dead and four million displaced, it is still not applied. “It will not be easy,” Jemma Nunu Kumba responded to the announcement of his appointment.
.
