What strikes most South Sudanese observers is the structure of the executive as defined in the R-ARCSS. While Kiir and Machar retain the presidency and the “first” vice-presidency respectively (as has been the case in previous peace attempts), the rest of the executive will include four other vice-presidents, including “one woman”5 On the one hand, this accommodative approach ensures that different groups, often the loudest and most often the most aggressive, can have a little strength and thus establish a certain stability in the system. On the other hand, this stability can only be short-lived, as the state begins to calculate the extent to which it finds itself in what Philip Roessler calls the “civil war trap” – wanting to contain adversaries and reduce the risk of a coup, while increasing the chances of civil war, as these distant adversaries build support outside the capital.6 This is especially true in the context of South Sudan, where trust between the president and his first vice-president was weak, if at all. Admittedly, the peculiarity of having five vice-presidents has not escaped anyone, including Kiir himself, who, shortly after the signing of the agreement, remarked that “South Sudan has become a field of experimentation”. 7 The date of 12 January 2019 marked four months since the government of South Sudan led by President Salva Kiir; the opposition Sudan People`s Liberation Movement (SPLM-IO) led by Riek Machar; and the South Sudanese Opposition Alliance signed the Revitalized Agreement for Conflict Resolution in the Republic of South Sudan (R-ARCSS) in September 2018. The agreement provides that implementation will take place in two stages. First, the Transition Phase (TPP) has an eight-month period during which the parties will prepare for the implementation of the R-ARCSS through the National Pre-Transition Committee (NPTC). The second phase is the effective implementation phase: a three-year period of a revitalized transnational government of national unity (UNTN RT) starting at the end of the TPP. The three-year period of UN-RTGo will be followed by national elections.1 The expanded nature of UN-RTGo, provided for in the R-ARCSS, may be a stumbling blocks in the pursuit of the objectives of the agreement. It is easy to understand that the Enlarged Bureau, cabinet and Parliament were deliberately designed to pragmatically adapt to the pro-Russian bed of South Sudanese political reality. Budgetary resources to support and maintain a Government of five Vice-Presidents; 45 ministers (including deputy ministers); 550 MPs; and several transitional commissions, bodies and committees will certainly be painful for a country already subject to arrears of more than 17 billion South Sudanese pounds (a surplus of 130 million US dollars), consisting of “three months of national salaries, five months of state transfers and twelve months of embassy salaries”, including members of the Transitional National Assembly.11 With the previous peace agreement (ARCSS), which has already used 1.6 billion South Sudanese pounds. in the first three quarters of the 2017/1812 financial year, in a context of slowing economic activity, an additional financial burden would weigh and weigh on .
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