Africa-Press – South-Sudan. South Sudan presidency on Friday defended the appointment of former presidential affairs minister Mayiik Ayii Deng as foreign minister saying President Salva Kiir Mayardit, with the virtue of being the head of state, has prerogative to appoint any person regardless of him having been removed for whatsoever reason.
Yesterday, President Salva Kiir issued a Republican Decree removing the country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Beatrice Khamisa Wani replacing her with former Minister of Presidential Affairs Mayiik Ayii Deng who was removed in 2020 after corruption allegations on Juba-Bahr el Ghazal highway.
Kiir had stated in 2020 that he removed Mayiik Ayii, who was replaced by Barnaba Marial Benjamin, because of corrupting the construction of the Juba-Bahr el Ghazal highway and as such was not ready to accommodate such ministers.
“My brother Mayiik did not have any problem with me but there was one problem, the road to Bar-el-Gazal. The company that we contracted was Shandong High Speed, how did it come out that it is now Shandong Nile Investment, that was the problem,” said Kiir at the time.
“The road was started in a very poor way. One rain only destroyed it all, it only that he is not here, and he would have answered if he had anything to say.”
Following the appointment, citizens including prominent activists took to social media to criticize the former minister’s appointment to the top diplomatic position of the world’s youngest country with some describing him as a ‘corrupt’ person who the president should not bring back into the public service.
“President Kiir fires you for corrupting public funds and reappoints you back. President Kiir appreciates and reward thieves. Failed Leadership,” activist Wani Michael of the advocacy group Okay Africa said in a social media Facebook post.
In respond to the social media criticism, the Press Secretary in the Office of the President Ateny Wek Ateny said Kiir as a head of state “has the prerogative to appoint and relieve anybody so deem necessary.”
“The public should know that when the president comes back to appoint the person, it is on the basis that the president might have got better information that gives him confidence that the person he relieved last time was relieved based on the information that time but now this is new information that led the president to be appointed the same person. We are all human.”
