For over six years, South Sudan's governance has been hindered by a unique arrangement born of the 2018 Revitalised Agreement. The five-member collegial presidency, with its sprawling governance clusters and parallel bureaucracies, was meant to halt gunfire, not administer a republic. This setup has resulted in perpetual gridlock, with every cabinet decision becoming an ideological war of attrition and every budget line becoming factional spoils rather than public funds.
The collegial executive transformed Juba into a court of rival fiefdoms, with five competing presidents pulling the levers of authority in opposite directions. This structural arrangement suffered from several defects, including the illusion of shared governance, the entrapment of the state budget, and the endless extension trap. The five vice-presidents and their sprawling ministerial clusters institutionalised suspicion rather than unity, obscuring accountability and consuming critical state funds.
The dissolution of the transitional government on September 22 and the relief of the five presidencies represent the restoration of decisiveness to South Sudanese sovereignty. By uncoupling national elections from stalled preconditions, such as the perpetually unfinished census and drawn-out constitutional drafting cycles, the recent restructuring broke the artificial stalemate. This move has cut through the tangled web of factional vetoes that had reduced governance to inertia.
Relieving the collegial presidency has forced every political actor, from the ruling party to historical opposition figures, out of the air-conditioned corridors of power-sharing and back into the political wild. The state has stripped the political class of its comfortable sinecures, and national leaders can no longer enjoy the trappings of power without facing a single ballot box or answering to a constituency outside their armed factions.
A caretaker framework operating under unified, singular executive leadership is an administrative necessity for conducting general elections. Running an election requires operational clarity, decisive logistical deployment, and clear command-and-control structures across security and administrative organs. Attempting to organise a nationwide vote with five rival vice-presidents second-guessing electoral logistical contracts would have invited chaos.
Critics of the dissolution cite the end of the power-sharing formula as dangerous, but fail to answer the fundamental democratic question: How long should an unelected committee of factional leaders rule a nation of twelve million citizens? The relief of the five presidencies sends an unmistakable signal to the East African Community, the African Union, and the South Sudanese electorate: the era of armed blackmail is over.
By dismantling the five presidencies and dissolving the transitional structure, South Sudan has taken a difficult but indispensable step toward constitutional normalcy. The Gordian knot of transitional paralysis has been severed, and power has been pried from the hands of an entrenched collegial elite and placed where it should have been all along: before the sovereign judgment of the people.
Key points
- The collegial presidency has been relieved ahead of the December 22, 2026, general elections.
- The dissolution of the transitional government and the relief of the five presidencies aim to restore decisiveness to South Sudanese sovereignty.
- The move marks a step toward constitutional normalcy, ending an unprecedented experiment in executive accommodation.
