The National Congress Party (NCP) of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir is one of about twenty political parties that registered on Monday in Juba, South Sudan.
According to South Sudan’s Political Parties Act, 2012, all parties should be registered in the independent South Sudan to be recognized in any future elections and the Political Parties Council (PPC) set tomorrow, January 15, 2016 as the deadline to register all parties in the country.
There are more than twenty political parties in South Sudan; most of them have offices only in the capital Juba including the ruling SPLM, which had never registered in South Sudan since independence in 2011 and had only been using the registration certificate from Khartoum before the country split.
Meanwhile, South Sudanese President, Salva Kiir, has appealed to his supporters to mobilize votes for him in future elections due to be conducted in 2018.
Speaking briefly to cheering supporters as the ruling party of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) handed its basic documents to the Political Parties Council (PPC) for registration, Kiir said there is no easy struggle in everything.
“When time comes for elections, you mobilize more people to come and increase your numbers and give all the votes to my box,” said Kiir, speaking to ululating SPLM supporters at Freedom Square in Juba.
The president was driven on an open hardtop car as several ministers, members of parliament from SPLM and ordinary citizens accompanied him to the PPC office in Thongpiny suburb of Juba.
“You have been in the sun for long time and that is why I stopped here to say thank you very much for the support accorded to us (SPLM),” he said, adding: “I want to tell you that there is no easy struggle. See how you walked on feet to the SPLM office and return here. That is a struggle.”
South Sudan is the world’s newest country, and broke away from the Sudan in 2011 after decades of war pitting the mainly Arab Muslim north against their countrymen in the Christian animist south.
