South Sudan’s cabinet postponed meeting over negligence
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June 7, 2013 (JUBA) – South Sudan’s cabinet on Friday failed to
conduct its weekly meeting due to negligence amidst conflicting
explanations over what prevented the executive members from attending
to one of their constitutional duties.
JPEG - 66.7 kb
South Sudan cabinet in session September 1, 2012 (file/photo ST)
Independent journalists who always covered the cabinet meetings said
they were told to disperse after the meeting was reportedly cancelled.
"We usually come to the ministry of cabinet affairs on Fridays to
cover the resolutions of the cabinet meeting from the minister of
information. While we were waiting outside the meeting hall from
11:30am, thinking that the cabinet meeting was going on, we were only
surprised three hours later on that the meeting was cancelled", a
journalist representing a local newspaper told Sudan Tribune.
He said there was no explanation given by the informer as to why the
cabinet cancelled its meeting or whether it was rescheduled for
another day soon.
However an official in the ministry of cabinet affairs, who asked to
remain anonymous, disclosed to the Sudan Tribune that the meeting
failed to take place mainly due to lack of agenda for discussion as
well as because of unpreparedness by president Salva Kiir Mayardit.
"There was no agenda to be discussed by the cabinet and this led to
the cancellation of the meeting", he said, adding that president Salva
Kiir also said he was not ready to brief the cabinet on his recent
trip to Japan.
The official also blamed the lack of agenda on failure by various
"cabinet clusters" to meet and deliberate on ministerial projects,
programs and policy documents which they in turn forward to the
cabinet for discussions and approval.
Currently there are a number of policy documents and national programs
that await approval by the cabinet in order to be endorsed by the
parliament.
The cabinet, he further explained, has grouped such clusters into
governance, economic and service, which are chaired by the minister of
cabinet affairs, minister of finance and minister of labour,
respectively.
This was the second time the cabinet meeting was cancelled due to lack
of agenda, he said. The first occurrence was last year which prompted
the Vice President, Riek Machar, to chair the three cabinet cluster
groups for several months in order to ensure attendants by the
ministers.
"It happened that many ministers did not want to come for the cluster
meetings, particularly when such meetings were chaired by their
respective colleague ministers," he said, adding that when the Vice
President took charge, the ministers met successfully and the cabinet
always had a lot of agenda to discuss.
Three weeks ago however President Salva Kiir Mayardit issued a
circular taking away the responsibility of cluster meetings from the
Vice President.
"Since the time the chairs of the three clusters were given back to
the three ministers mentioned, meetings failed to take place due to
lack of attendants as ministers were reluctant to come for the
meetings", he explained.
The cabinet is composed of nearly 60 ministers and deputy ministers.
It was on Friday that the governance cluster chaired by the cabinet
minister, Deng Alor Kuol, reacted by calling for a meeting after
learning that there was no cabinet agenda. Under normal circumstances,
the governance cluster meets every Tuesday.
The official further narrated that a single addendum was however
prepared for Friday meeting so that President Salva Kiir could brief
the cabinet on his recent trip to Japan, but the president said he was
not ready to give the briefing.
Kiir came back from Japan on Wednesday where he attended a conference
on development in Africa.
(ST)
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