South Sudan President Salva Kiir has fired his government's Defence and Interior ministers in a move that goes against the terms of a peace agreement signed in 2018 with opposition party leader and First Vice President, Riek Machar. Kiir fired the country's defence minister Angelina Teny, a leading member of the opposition SPLM-IO led by Machar who is also the latter's wife, and interior minister, Mahmoud Solomon, a member of the SPLM party, in a presidential order read on state TV late on Friday, Lily Martin Manyiel, the President's spokesperson said on Saturday, March 4. There is no reason I can give you right now for their sacking but it's a normal procedure usually, Manyiel said, adding that no decision had yet been made on their replacements. Kiir and Machar camps signed a peace agreement in 2018 that ended five years of civil war. Under the agreement, the two main opposing factions and other groups agreed to form a unity government and share responsibility for the armed forces. In the recent past, the South Sudan government has downplayed reports of security tensions in Juba. But reports indicate that Kiir and Machar camps have continued to disagree on how to implement security arrangements as stipulated in the 2018 peace deal.
