Juba, December 23, 2015 (SSNA) — The Chairman of the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (JMEC) for the South Sudan Peace Agreement Festus Mogae, government, armed opposition, and former political detainees have begun talks over the selection of ministers who will work for the up-coming interim government, the South Sudan News Agency (SSNA) has learned.
Negotiations began two days after an advance team of South Sudanese rebels arrived in Juba after two year in exile.
Under the deal, the transitional government will have a total of 30 ministers of which 16 for the government, 10 for the SPLM/A-IO, 2 for former political detainees, and 2 for other political parties.
The ministers will perform different tasks according to group categories specified in the power-sharing deal.
The IGAD-Plus’s compromise peace agreement calls for the establishment of an interim government within 90 days after its signing.
The pact also requires main three parties to the conflict namely, government, opposition, and former political detainees to be represented in the transitional government.
JMEC, the body tasked to head the implementation process of the IGAD-Plus deal, was formed by IGAD in October and inaugurated by the African Union (AU) in November.
The SSNA has also learned that JMEC’s Chairman, Mogae, made it clear to all parties in the meeting that the full implementation of the pact must now move forward so that suffering people of South Sudan should begin living in peace.
Fighting broke out in mid-December of 2013 between different divisions of presidential guards after many months of political fracas between senior leaders of the ruling SPLM party. The two-year old has forced at least 2.3 million South Sudanese to flee their homes, hundreds of thousands fled to the neighboring countries, and tens of thousands of people have been killed.