South Sudan President Appoints Own Defense Minister, Breaching Peace Deal

South Sudan's President Salva Kiir addresses the opening session of parliament in Juba, South Sudan August 30, 2021. REUTERS/Jok Solomun/File Photo
South Sudan's President Salva Kiir addresses the opening session of parliament in Juba, South Sudan August 30, 2021. REUTERS/Jok Solomun/File Photo
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South Sudan President Appoints Own Defense Minister, Breaching Peace Deal

South Sudan's President Salva Kiir addresses the opening session of parliament in Juba, South Sudan August 30, 2021. REUTERS/Jok Solomun/File Photo
South Sudan's President Salva Kiir addresses the opening session of parliament in Juba, South Sudan August 30, 2021. REUTERS/Jok Solomun/File Photo

South Sudan's President Salva Kiir has appointed a member of his own party as defense minister, according to a decree read on state media, breaching a peace deal in which the role should be selected by the party of opposition leader Riek Machar.

Kiir fired defense minister Angelina Teny, who is also First Vice President Machar's wife, along with the interior minister this month, re-igniting long-standing disagreements over how the two
war veterans share power, AFP said.

Kiir and Machar's forces signed a peace agreement in 2018 that ended five years of civil war that killed 400,000 people and triggered Africa's biggest refugee crisis since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Implementation of the deal has been slow, and bouts of fighting have continued to kill and displace large numbers of civilians.

According to the decree read on state TV late on Wednesday, Kiir replaced Teny with Chol Thon Balok, a loyal general and former governor of Upper Nile state.

"The appointment of Chol Thon as a minister of defense is unilateral and a blatant violation of the peace agreement," said Puok Both Baluang, Machar's spokesperson, calling for Teny to be reinstated.

A meeting this month aimed at resolving the rift between Kiir and Machar ended in a deadlock. The stalemate is likely to cause paralysis in the implementation of the peace deal, which is meant to culminate in a national election at the end of 2024, said Boboya James, a policy analyst at the Juba-based Institute of Social Policy and Research.

"(Kiir) wants to have all the powerful institutions," James said. "What he is doing is to consolidate that level of power between now and towards the elections."



Trump Makes a Victor’s Return to Washington to Meet with Biden and GOP Lawmakers

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump smiles at an election night watch party at the Palm Beach Convention Center, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump smiles at an election night watch party at the Palm Beach Convention Center, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP)
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Trump Makes a Victor’s Return to Washington to Meet with Biden and GOP Lawmakers

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump smiles at an election night watch party at the Palm Beach Convention Center, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump smiles at an election night watch party at the Palm Beach Convention Center, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP)

President-elect Donald Trump is making a victor's return to Washington.

President Joe Biden will welcome him to the White House on Wednesday for an Oval Office visit that is a traditional part of the peaceful handoff of power — a ritual that Trump himself declined to participate in four years ago.

Trump also planned to meet with Republicans from Congress as they focus on his Day 1 priorities and prepare for a potentially unified government with a GOP sweep of power in the nation's capital. His arrival amid Republican congressional leadership elections could put his imprint on the outcome.

It's a stunning return to the US seat of government for the former president, who departed nearly four years ago a diminished, politically defeated leader after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol but is preparing to come back to power with what he and his GOP allies see as a mandate for governance.

Ahead of the visit, House Speaker Mike Johnson said that Republicans are "ready to deliver" on Trump’s "America First" agenda.

After his election win in 2016, Trump met with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office and called it "a great honor." But he soon was back to heaping insults on Obama, including accusing his predecessor — without evidence — of having wire-tapped him during the 2016 campaign.

Four years later, Trump disputed his 2020 election loss to Biden, and he has continued to lie about widespread voter fraud that did not occur. He didn't invite Biden, then the president-elect, to the White House and he left Washington without attending Biden's inauguration. It was the first time that had happened since Andrew Johnson skipped Ulysses S. Grant's swearing-in 155 years ago.

Biden insists that he'll do everything he can to make the transition to the next Trump administration go smoothly. That's despite having spent more than a year campaigning for reelection and decrying Trump as a threat to democracy and the nation’s core values. Biden then bowed out of the race in July and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him.

In the wake of the election, the president has abandoned his dire warnings about Trump, saying in a speech last week, "The American experiment endures. We’re going to be okay."

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden is committed to "making sure that this transition is effective, efficient and he's doing that because it is the norm, yes, but also the right thing to do for the American people."

"We want this to go well," Jean-Pierre added. "We want this to be a process that gets the job done."

Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan echoed that sentiment, saying the administration will uphold the "responsible handoff from one president to the next, which is in the best tradition of our country."

Wednesday's visit is more than just a courtesy call.

"They will go through the top issues — both domestic and foreign policy issues — including what is happening in Europe and Asia and the Middle East," Sullivan told CBS of Wednesday’s meeting. "And the president will have the chance to explain to President Trump how he sees things ... and talk to President Trump about how President Trump is thinking about taking on these issues when he takes office."

Traditionally, as the outgoing and incoming presidents meet in the West Wing, the first lady hosts her successor upstairs in the residence — but Melania Trump isn’t expected to attend.

After his 2016 meeting with Obama, Trump also visited lawmakers on Capitol Hill and will be doing the same Wednesday — not far from where a mob of his supporters staged a violent January 2021 attack on the US Capitol to try and stop the certification of Biden's election victory.

When Trump left Washington in 2021, even some top Republicans had begun to decry him for his role in helping incite the Capitol attack. But his win in last week's election completes a political comeback that has seen Trump once again become the unchallenged head of the GOP.

It's not the first time Trump has returned to the Capitol area since the end of his first term, though. Congressional Republicans hosted Trump over the summer, as Trump was again solidifying his dominance over the party.

His latest visit comes as Republicans, who wrested the Senate majority from Democrats in last week's elections and are on the cusp of keeping GOP control of the House, are in the midst of their own leadership elections happening behind closed doors Wednesday.

The president-elect's arrival will provide another boost to Johnson, who has pulled ever-closer to Trump as he worked to keep his majority — and his own job with the gavel.

The speaker said he expects to see Trump repeatedly throughout the week, including at an event later that evening, and at the president-elect's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida "all weekend."

It's unclear whether Trump will also visit the Senate, which is entangled in a more divisive closed-door leadership election in the three-way race to replace outgoing GOP Leader Mitch McConnell.

Trump's allies are pushing GOP senators to vote for Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who had been a longshot candidate challenging two more senior Republicans, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, for the job.